


Simulacra

by neverfaraway



Category: Ancient History RPF, Historical RPF, Rome
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 03:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3312911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaraway/pseuds/neverfaraway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'What one has, one ought to use; and whatever one does one should do with all one’s might.' - Cicero, <i>De Senectute</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> First posted at my livejournal in 2010 - this is a revised version (edited; partially re-written).
> 
> Please find notes, a map and a glossary [here](http://neverfaraway.livejournal.com/69907.html).

  
** Prologue **

_Nil igitur fieri de nilo posse putandam es servire quando opus est rebus_. –  
One cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.  
Lucretius, _De rerum natura_ , I 206

**a.d. iv Id. Quint. 48**

It was midsummer on the Pharsalian plain. The stench of rotten horseflesh rose higher with every moment under the midday sun, with the result that it was unbearable to sit outside and even worse to recline in the stultifying heat of the tents; outside, at least, there was a breeze. 

“Oh, for a world without armies,” muttered Cicero, tugging testily at the collar of his tunic, still uncomfortable in cuirass and vambraces despite the months they had spent in Greece with Pompey’s legions. “This is no way for a civilised man to dress.”

“What would you have, Cicero, for the sake of your comfort?” Ahenobarbus was reclining at the opposite side of the table; he had been affected badly by the sun and was permanently red-faced, giving him the appearance of being extremely angry even as he levered himself onto his elbow to peer at Cicero with amused curiosity. “A republic built on rhetoric, entirely without an army? How do you propose we keep our Provinces?”

“I would see the republic as the republic once was. In the time of Africanus the army was no bad thing – these days it is simply the play thing of powerful men. Let the senate rule the army and not the other way around!”

Brutus looked up from his contemplation of one of the small, sour apples that seemed in such sudden abundance, which he had been passing from hand to hand in listless agitation. “How often must we argue over this, Cicero? A general will always be popular with his men; that is the nature of a long campaign. They create veterans with loyalty only to their leaders, not to the republic. Caesar spent years in Gaul; it’s little wonder he has the Thirteenth with him, and the best of the Fifth.”

“Yes, well, one wonders whether all this might have been avoided had we reigned in Caesar’s ambition a little earlier.”

“Ah, but we could never have done it,” Ahenobarbus concluded with satisfaction. “He was winning – therefore he was allowed to continue.”

Cicero frowned and said nothing, a sure sign that he had lost the argument; it was one that had been played out countless times in the months since the departure of the army from Rome. 

Outside in the sun, Pompey’s son Quintus was throwing his dagger at something hidden in the shadow of the cypress trees, and when Brutus craned his neck he saw that it was the body of a dog – one of Quintus’ own hunting pack that he had brought with him to Greece and had kept the camp awake at night with their howling and barking. An emaciated and wretched animal, it lay where it had fallen through neglect and want of water, chained to a tree and forgotten by its master, at least until he found this purpose for it. Each time the knife struck, Quintus beckoned to his slave, who removed the knife and returned it, only for Quintus to throw again – it was a lazy game for Pompey’s spoiled, indolent son. Brutus frowned in disgust and returned his attention to the conversation.

“My mood has turned as sour as this wine,” Cicero was saying, casting a contemptuous glance into the depths of his cup. He set it down heavily on the table and stood as though to leave, tugging uncomfortably at the collar of his breastplate. “Curse this ridiculous military costume! I am a senator, not a centurion!”

He exited the tent and strode through the trees towards the edge of the camp, wishing to put as much space between himself and the rest of Pompey’s followers as possible. Quintus, still reclining in the shade beneath a broad-branched cypress, caught his eye as he hurried past and smirked with lazy insolence.

“You’d better not be running off to join Caesar, old man,” he taunted, fingering the blade of the dagger that lay beside him on the arm of his chair.

“You would do better to remember who you are talking to, boy."

Quintus laughed and shrugged and returned to his game. Cicero huffed a sigh of disgust and turned his back. 

Brutus watched him go, then looked down into his own cup; empty. Ahenobarbus was picking his teeth and no doubt about to strike up further conversation, but Brutus saw little reason to remain and endure another sally on the subject of his relative inexperience in the field of battle. Besides which, no matter how foul his mood, Cicero was better company than the rest of their party put together – increasingly these days his dissenting opinions chimed with Brutus’ own sentiments. They were both weary of the wait for decisive action and both at odds with Cato, whose incessant refrain of _Caesar delenda est_ had long grown tiresome. 

Cicero strode to the edge of the camp, noting with irritation the work on the new footings for the horaria, the great granaries raised on stilts to allow air to circulate and prevent the grain from spoiling; a sign that the quartermasters were preparing for a protracted stay in Pharsalus. The sun was still high, and as he passed the sentries the back of his breastplate chafed his neck, rubbing at the already flushed and peeling skin and making him wish, above all things, for the cooler climes of the Palatine and the soft caress of a freshly laundered toga.

The land directly to the north of the camp was open and arid, with only sparse patches of grass covering the hard-baked ground. It was elevated and blessed by a hot, stinging wind which, though it did little to relieve the heat of the afternoon, provided some relief from the torpid stillness of the air around the camp. Cicero pushed himself to gain higher ground in pursuit of the breeze, and soon found himself gazing, short-of-breath, at the Mare Nostrum, which sparkled white and dark blue beyond the trees and the sprawl of Pompey’s army. 

He was dismayed to find himself breathless after so short a climb; as a young man he had prided himself on his stamina, believing as his tutor had taught that physical endurance was as necessary an ability in an orator as a firm grasp of rhetoric. Tiro, poor Tiro, had trained with him every day, and had counted the steps they took around the palaestrae of Greece, around the Forum in Rome, reliable as a water clock marking time. Cicero had taken to performing exercises every morning before breakfast, and soon he had felt strong and virile and ready to face whatever his position as Praetor, and later as Consul, could summon to test him. Then had come exile in Cilicia, and his interest in training had waned. In other regards, he found the loss of his youth mattered little, but the fleeting vestiges of his former physique made a mockery of him in his encroaching old age, constant and unforgiving.

He stood and gazed out to sea for some long minutes more in order to regain his breath, and cast his thoughts to Tiro, adrift again and separated from him by ill health and circumstances beyond either of their control. The physical intimacy which he had so cherished in their youth had faded to a distant memory, but the friendship and counsel which Tiro offered in difficult times were things Cicero greatly missed in his absence. Letters had arrived, that morning, from Atticus in Buthrotum, assuring him that Tiro was recovering from his latest fever, and from Tiro himself, complaining of the doctor’s determination to confine him to his bed. Cicero had scribbled off brief, unsatisfactory notes to them both, imploring them to heed the doctor’s instructions and on no account to return to Rome – or worse, in Tiro’s case, to attempt to join him in Greece.

A letter had come, too, from Tullia, and even the familiar shape of her handwriting had sprung a well of longing inside him for Italy, for the farm, and the happy days they had spent there as father and daughter before her marriage had taken her away to the Provinces. What his son lacked in elegance of expression was made up for by his military prowess, and so Marcus' letters were brief, cursive affairs mainly concerned with those matters. Terentia, his wife, wrote rarely. 

“I hope you don’t mind me joining you, Cicero,” Brutus called, shaking Cicero from his melancholic reverie. “Ahenobarbus was about to attempt another of his lessons on martial tactics, and the only options for escape were to follow you or begin another interminable letter to my wife.”

“As though we have nothing better to do than idle away the hours writing letters to our families,” Cicero complained, surveying the camp and picking out the distant figure of Quintus, still reclining in the shade and tossing knives for entertainment. “Even Pompey’s charming son is becoming impatient of all these delays! Little wonder Caesar believes himself capable of victory, when the best men of Rome are sitting idle while Pompey Magnus dips his toes in the Mare Nostrum.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Brutus replied with a smile. “Better to write to our wives now than have our heads conveyed to them later in baskets, unannounced.”

Cicero gave a resigned, mirthless laugh. “ _My_ head – perhaps.”

“Quintus would cut it off himself if he knew we were standing here in contemplation of defeat,” Brutus agreed. He raised a hand to his eyes and gazed out over the sea to the horizon. “You’re lucky I know better than to take this melancholy mood of yours seriously.”

“You may take it very seriously indeed, for I am heartily sick of keeping company with these soldiers and their hapless commanders. Pompey – still troubled by the thought of springing an attack against his former friend! What little advantage we might have pressed after Dyrrhachium has already been lost, and still we suffer this ridiculous prevarication.”

“It’s difficult to keep up with you, Cicero. You’ve expressed your distaste for open battle often enough – you’ve certainly bored Pompey with it – and all of a sudden you’re clamouring for a confrontation.”

“Oh, I thank Fortuna daily they need me here to maintain the veneer of senatorial respectability,” Cicero replied snidely. “But we are all rats on a sinking ship – and if I cannot take my leave of politics altogether, I’m no longer sure I would rather wait here in this hornet’s nest than throw myself headlong into Caesar’s cruel embrace.”

Brutus neglected to hold him to account for the use of the mixed metaphor and they stood for a little while in silence. How long ago the discussions seemed over the division of the Provinces in the inevitable event of Pompey’s victory. In the weeks since, while Pompey had refused all Cato’s pleas to stand and fight and their men had begun to turn to Caesar in small but noticeable numbers, Cicero’s hopes for Rome had begun to dwindle. He had complained of it bitterly to Brutus and Brutus had confided his own misgivings, until the two of them had found themselves convinced of being the only two realists remaining in the entirety of Pompey’s army. Once the harvest could be collected, Pompey’s strategy of starving Caesar into submission would be rendered futile, and open battle – in which the senatorial legions could no longer be certain of victory – would be unavoidable. 

“A letter came three days ago from my brother-in-law,” Brutus said eventually, causing Cicero to glance at him speculatively, wondering how two men once as close as Brutus and his sister’s husband could have become such distant acquaintances that their first communication in years should come in the midst of civil war. “His ships in Sicilia continue to be a thorn in Caesar’s side; Pompey was the most animated I have seen him in days when we discussed it.”

“Ships are very well, but if Cassius must make bedfellows of the Pontians in order to have any impact on Caesar’s supplies, it won’t sit happily with the senate.”

“Perhaps you ought to do as Cato says,” Brutus ventured, then. “Return to Rome and marshal the rest of the senate in support of Pompey.”

Cicero snorted. “If I were to return to Rome, I would marshal the senate in support of itself.”

“And will you?”

It was an unexpectant question, as though Brutus already knew the answer. Cicero smiled at him, “No, I fear my horizons have lately become distressingly restricted.”

Brutus smiled in return and nodded. “Come, we had better be getting back.”

They started down the side of the hill and made their way slowly through the camp, past the quartermasters and their new, empty granaries.

*

**a.d. vi Id. Sext.**

The battle for the Pharsalian plain had been fought and lost and Pompey’s legions were in chaotic retreat – chased down and slaughtered, or scattered and making their way to the sea in hope of finding passage to the East. Pompey himself, having announced his intention to make for Egypt, had gone south with his wife and children. The camp was being broken haphazardly by what few soldiers remained, or sacked by the local Greeks, who had no preference for Pompey or Caesar, only hoping that the end of the civil war would bring about the alleviation of their taxes.

Night had fallen steadily, and as yet Caesar had made no move on the camp. Cato and Metellus had left shortly before sunset for the coast to begin their journey to Africa, leaving Cicero and Brutus the only senators remaining in a camp overrun by scavengers and slaves. Brutus seemed not to care whether they gave themselves up to Caesar immediately or waited for him to find them, but despite his bravado of previous weeks Cicero had no desire to throw himself upon Caesar’s mercy in haste. He held some notion that if Caesar did decide to seek them out for retribution, it would not be until the following morning. He preferred to wait, and to enjoy the last hours of his freedom.

“He will have sent Antony a little way south, in pursuit of Pompey,” he told Brutus, as they reclined beneath a pine tree in the twilight, “and the rest of his men east to finish off the legions.” His mouth twitched with the beginnings of a grim smile. “For now, he is leaving what is left of us here to cook in our juices. He is giving us the opportunity to surrender.”

They were cushioned on a carpet of fallen needles beneath a pine tree, sprawled in a manner utterly unbefitting esteemed members of the senate. Before them was the last of three fat jugs of wine which Cicero’s slaves had found amongst the debris of the quartermaster’s stores. 

“I wonder what Caesar will do with the republic,” Cicero said bitterly, “once he has declared himself its king.”

Brutus took a long swig of wine and tipped his head to rest against the tree trunk. “No more about the republic tonight, Cicero, please.”

“We are sitting in the dirt beneath a tree, drunk as slaves, approaching the hour of our ignominious surrender,” Cicero murmured. “What else is there to talk about?”

Brutus said nothing. His mother would look on him with disgust if she saw him now, and with good reason. “Caesar will count us as slaves come the morning, not subjects.”

Cicero laughed and raised the wine to his lips. “Sometimes, Brutus, you make for extremely depressing company.”

“Given our situation, you seem entirely too cheerful.”

They sank into silence broken only by the crackle of the fire, as Cicero thought for the thousandth time that evening how terrible it was that someone so young as Brutus should discover so early in life what it was to abandon one’s principles. 

“I’m sorry to have led us here,” he said, eventually. “Cato and I, we are old men. I have learned to endure ignominy and exile, but you – you are far too young to have to bear this kind of disgrace.”

Brutus smiled crookedly and shut his eyes, tired of looking at nothing but the canopy of branches and the darkening sky. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you count yourself alongside Cato in anything.”

“Long may it be the last.” 

Brutus laughed; a low, warm, welcome sound which set Cicero at ease for the first time since Pompey’s departure for the coast. 

“What a sight we’ll make when we ride into Caesar’s camp.” 

“Do I look so dreadful?” Brutus asked, even with his smile fading at the thought of their impending encounter with Caesar.

Brutus' face was thrown by the fire into a sharp relief of light and shadows, and Cicero turned to consider him more carefully. A layer of dirt gave his skin a swarthy look, while his hair was tousled and his tunic stained and ripped. Only the aquiline planes of his face betrayed his nobility – otherwise, Cicero might have mistaken him for a slave. The thought made desire stir within him, even while it prompted him to remembered Tiro, safe in Buthrotum and awaiting his return. Brutus was beautiful in a way Tiro had never had any hope of being, and some quality of Brutus’ languid, long-legged sprawl in the firelight made Cicero yearn to possess him. It was impossible, however pleasant the contemplation might be.

“You look every inch Caesar’s equal,” he lied, running a hand over his own stubbled jaw and looking down at his dusty attire. “I, no doubt, look only fit to clean his boots.”

“Never,” Brutus declared and reached to refill his cup. 

Cicero reached for his own and realised too late that his hands were trembling; the cup tumbled from his grasp and would have rolled in the dirt had Brutus not caught it with a deftness of touch belied by the way his words had begun to slur. 

“Careful, Cicero,” he chided gently, “or I’ll think you’re more anxious than you profess to be.”

His expression hovered somewhere between misery and a beatific sort of peacefulness, and he said nothing as he handed back the wine cup, only folded his hand absent-mindedly around Cicero’s and gazed distractedly into the fire.

“You know,” he said, a moment later, while Cicero’s fingers curled against his palm, “I’m more grateful than I can say for your company here.”

“Really,” Cicero replied, amused. He thought of Brutus’ frequent impatience with him for his cynicism and his argumentative nature in the face of Cato’s pig-headedness. “Well, then I’m glad of your company, too.”

Brutus raised the hand in his own to his lips and brushed a lingering kiss across the knuckles. He released it and then reached again for the wine, peering into the depths of the jar before letting out a soft, huffing sigh. 

“We appear to have exhausted the wine,” he reported.

“That may be no ill coincidence,” Cicero murmured, taking the empty jar from him and placing it safely on the ground.

“Shall we face Caesar with what’s left of our men behind us?” Brutus asked, his words running together tiredly as he scrubbed at his face with the palm of his hand, “or are we going to slink into his camp like dogs?”

“Unarmed, I think,” Cicero answered, glancing sideways at him, concerned, “but we must take the men.”

“Of course.”

Cicero wondered what Brutus saw in the fire, so intently did he watch the flames dance and spit; wine and despair were enough to make any man far from home think of Rome, or of their mothers, neither of which could hold any particular comfort for Brutus now. 

“I think I shall take myself off to find somewhere to sleep,” the younger man said dully, after some minutes of silence, hauling himself to his feet. He extended a hand and fixed Cicero with a solicitous, expectant look. “Would you care to join me, Cicero?”

Cicero gazed up at him, understanding with some surprise what he had been offered. It was a long moment before he shook his head and turned away. “No – thank you. I’ll stay by the fire a while longer, I think.”

Brutus nodded, smiled, and left without another word.

*

The next morning they rode unarmed into Caesar’s camp ashen-faced and wearing clothes grimed with smoke and dust. Brutus was depressed and silent, still the worse for drink, and Cicero’s attempts at conversation met with no sign that Brutus had even heard him. By the time Caesar’s camp came into view, Cicero himself had sunk into such a grim mood that he could contemplate little else but the fate that awaited them. He glowered at the sentry posted at the approach to the encampment and bristled at the man’s impertinence when they were challenged.

"We are Rome, boy,” Cicero told him, “what’s left of it, come to surrender to your chief."

***


	2. Good Omens

  
** Chapter 1  
Boni Auspici **

_Medio de fonte leporum surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat._ – Full from the fount of joy’s delicious springs / Some bitter o’er the flowers the bubbling venom springs.  
Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura, IV 1129_ ; Byron, _Childe Harold, canto I, st. 82_  


**a.d. ii Non. Iun. 47**

Dawn had painted the sky with broad brushstrokes of orange and vermillion while the previous night’s moon faded sluggishly behind its hazy veil. Thin yellow sunlight had begun to advance across the roof of Titus Pomponius Atticus’ well-appointed house and fell weakly into the garden, scattered into droplets through the broad leaves of a fig tree. It illuminated dappled sections of a mosaic showing Hylas cavorting with a blushing nymph; beneath it sat Marcus Tullius Cicero, the chill of the early morning aggravating his rheumatism. He did not mind waiting. In his encroaching old age he had discovered much of the lassitude that had eluded him as a young man. 

He picked a small, unripe fruit from the fig tree, peeled the skin from the pith and the pith from the flesh with little enthusiasm, and finally discarded the whole fruit uneaten in a nearby border of flowering hibiscus. Atticus and most of his household staff were still asleep, and Cicero had been attended on waking by a young slave, a boy of no more than twelve, whom he had dispatched over the crest of the Quirinal with a hastily scribbled letter.

The letter gave him cause for concern. It was the ill-composition of the thing. It had been too early to wake Tiro, for in all conscience he knew he had been working his secretary too hard of late, and his health was not what it had been, but his own hand had trembled intolerably due to the early hour. He’d been unable to summon any of his usual stylistic tricks, and felt unmanned by his inability to command anaphora and ascending tricolon into cutting condemnation for Brutus’ indiscretions. 

“No reply yet, I imagine?” he asked when the slave returned, receiving a shaken head in response.

*

Across the wide expanse of the city, removed from the urban sprawl by a complex of tidy streets and high, stuccoed walls, Marcus Junius Brutus stood at an open window, warmed despite the lingering morning chill by tendrils of sunlight creeping over the windowsill. There was saffron in the air, bitter and deep and reminiscent of the scent and taste of a woman’s body. Brutus leaned his head against the window frame and breathed deeply. Behind him, long, pale limbs arched and stretched against the bed linen. He frowned, one hand curled around the letter from Cicero; it was this which commanded his attention as he watched day dawn over the brow of the Quirinal hill.

“Must I summon one of your slaves to have you brought back to bed,” came a drowsy enquiry from the depths of the pillows, “or will you come voluntarily?”

He turned and spared the barest of smiles for his erstwhile companion. She sprawled and stretched before him, a picture of artful debauchery, pigmented hair tumbling over the pillows, her skin milky and unblemished by the previous night’s exertions. Had he lain with his wife in such a manner, he should have felt obliged to find excuses for his roughness, but this woman expected no apologies. She was, as Cicero had been at pains to point out, a veteran in the art of rough fucking.

“I’m afraid not, Volumnia.” He tucked the scroll into the folds of his tunic and bent to retrieve his father's gold ring from the floor. “I have business to attend to.”

She smiled coyly and lay back against the pillows. “Important men like you always do.”

Brutus had no need of a reminder of where her affections had previously lain, certainly not now that he had had time to carefully explore and reject his own fleeting desire for her. It had not escaped his notice that this woman viewed her dalliance with him as a way to clamber back onto the dining couch of high society from which she had so very nearly been cast. He felt contempt for her, and for himself, that he should have allowed drink and unaccustomed lust to overwhelm his better judgement yet again; that he should have permitted petty arguments with female relations – there was a plague of them, these days, and counter-balancing their individual agendas was a rough task at the best of times – to goad him into courting and bedding a woman such as this. 

There was nevertheless some criticism he would accept only from a few trusted friends; the fact that Cicero’s letter was nestled inside the folds of his toga and not in scraps upon the floor attested to that.

On his way out of the room he instructed the slaves to help Volumnia dress. He paused in the doorway and offered her a cool smile.

“I doubt I will find time to entertain you here again.” 

To her credit she made no protest that their dalliance should be cut short and would be gone by the time he returned.

*

Brutus strode into Atticus’ garden a little later trailed by his newly-woken host and a bevy of attendant slaves. Cicero got immediately to his feet, betraying his anxiety and reassuring Brutus that there was not, after all, to be any need for a great and unbearable argument. He nodded in greeting and took the seat offered to him by Atticus’ anxious wife.

“Cicero,” he said, cordially enough, his hand coming to rest on the cast-iron table beside his chair. “I received your letter.”

Cicero executed one of the smiles he wore when unsure of the auspices. He was a consummate actor, but Brutus had seen him wear that expression a thousand times. “You flatter me to call it that; I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Actually, you didn’t.” 

Cicero sat, brushing imaginary dust from his toga, and turned to address their host, whose wife was still hovering at Brutus’ elbow. “Atticus, may I trouble you for refreshments? This matter is a little sensitive, and would best be dealt with over wine.”

Atticus nodded graciously and gestured to the slave. “Wine,” he instructed, “and bring bread and oil.”

“Thank you.” Cicero resumed his seat. "You won’t mind giving us the use of your garden?”

“Of course not,” Atticus assured him, smiling broadly, the very picture of the attentive host. He gestured for the slaves to return to the house. “Call for Hypaxos, should you require anything else. Good to see you, Brutus,” he added, inclining his head and retreating beyond the portico.

Cicero waited until they were alone to turn to Brutus, as did Brutus to remove the rolled letter from his toga. A slave hurried forth from the house and placed bread and oil in terracotta dishes on the table, impeding the conversation before it had had a chance to begin. Cicero made a quiet sound of impatience as the slave fussed, mixing wine and water.

“Wine, domine?”

Brutus nodded and allowed the slave to fill his cup almost to the brim before holding up his hand. 

“It’s a little early,” Cicero said, declining the second cup. “I’ll take some honeyed water.” 

The slave retreated into the house, leaving the wine jug, and Cicero rose from his seat beneath the fig tree to join Brutus in the small patch of sunlight creeping across the courtyard’s tiled floor. 

“I must apologise,” he said immediately, “for the ugly composition of my note. The language was almost as vulgar as the subject matter; forgive me.”

“A less well-dispositioned man might have taken offence,” Brutus agreed with a smile. The sun on his face had warmed away any prospect of cold resentment and he felt content to weather any great speech Cicero might have composed for his benefit. “Fortunately, when I woke up this morning I was feeling quite cheerful.” 

“Fortuitous, though I’d prefer not to consider why.”

“Now, now, Cicero. That wasn’t the reason.”

“Well, thank heavens,” Cicero replied with an arch of his eyebrow, “that today is not the day a mere dancing girl turns the head of noble Brutus.”

Brutus set down his cup, smile fading a little. “Steady on, Cicero, there’s no need for sarcasm.” 

“‘Steady on’, you say, as though I were questioning the virtue of a Vestal virgin.” Cicero got to his feet in agitation. “I returned from the country to reports of your having taken up with that woman, that pantomime actress, who has taken every opportunity to transgress the bounds of decency, and flaunts her decrepitude in public at every turn entirely without conscience, and you ask me to ‘steady on’...” He clicked his tongue behind his teeth in irritation, reminding Brutus incongruously of his mother’s slave scolding the kitchen girls. “She’s been no friend to either of us, in the past. Nor has she been a friend, it ought to be said, to either of our wives.”

“I wasn’t aware my private affairs had become significant enough to garner such esteemed interest,” Brutus commented mildly, though Cicero detected an edge of determination to his voice; that quiet indignation which may be recognised as the mark of a principled man forced to face the evidence of his less-than-principled behaviour.

“Were they of no consequence, then I’m sure they would have remained private. But the fact that that woman was Antony’s concubine and, until a small number of months ago, touting herself about the city as though she were the very queen of Sheba – that makes the affair extremely consequential indeed.”

Brutus made a determined study of his cup, chastened as Cicero had known he would be. “Forgive me, Cicero, but the affair is now over, I fail to see how it can be of any further consequence – ”

"Forgive _me_ , Brutus, but need I remind you on exactly _whose_ leavings it was you slipped in?” Cicero demanded, echoing the vulgar sentiments of his letter, which lay on the table by the curled fingers of Brutus’ left hand. He softened his voice and attempted a tone of concerned sincerity. “Would you have us beset by a second Sempronia, and make Antony your Catilina?”

“Antony, another Catilina!” Brutus laughed in incredulity. “The man hasn’t the intelligence for that, and certainly not the subtlety.”

Cicero frowned at Brutus’ making light of the suggestion, apparently entirely serious. "You forget, I think, that if the siege in Egypt should continue indefinitely, we are in the unenviable position of having to abide by Antony's every whim."

"I thought your disapprobation was for my affair with Antony's mistress, not Caesar's campaign in Egypt."

"I think you'll find the issues are not entirely unconnected. Admittedly, my concern for your recent indiscretions has been that of one friend for another and motivated by my distaste for – forgive me – shabby behaviour of any kind. Meanwhile, Caesar...” Cicero sighed. “Antony is ambitious. He'll not wait too long before seeking greater power."

"I think you misjudge him, you know. Antony may be a brute and a rabble-rouser, but he’ll remain loyal to his chosen master till the end. Which is more than can be said for either of us." Brutus raised an eyebrow over the rim of his cup.

Cicero ignored the last comment on their past inconstancies and looked faintly surprised, as though Brutus had alighted on something which had not previously occurred to him. He did not often like to be outdone in these things. "You think Antony will settle for constitutional power, for such a man as Caesar?"

“For Caesar?” Brutus considered it carefully for a moment. "For Caesar, yes, I think he will."

Cicero nodded and, if he had further reservations, he kept them to himself. The subject had been breached, discussed and dealt with, and he saw no reason to provoke a more heated argument. As always, he felt pleased by Brutus’ willingness to accept perceived criticism, and gratified to be in a position of trust such that he was able to offer advice and have it graciously heard. 

The conversation turned to the matter of Cicero’s ill-favoured son-in-law’s attempts to seek cancelation of his debts, and the sun had nearly completed its journey to the summit of the fig tree before Cicero remembered his unfulfilled desire for a cup of honeyed water and called impatiently for the slave.

***

**a.d. ii. Id. Mai. 46: One Year Later**

Titus Pomponius Atticus was Cicero’s oldest friend, his constant correspondent since they were schooled together in Greece. In spite of his prodigious wealth, and his occasional forays into literature – a history of Cicero’s consulship, and what he liked to call ‘a smattering of poetry’ – Atticus’ life remained mainly one of absolute leisure. He refrained from politics, in as much as any Roman could, and did not take up the place that might have been found for him in the senate. He had married late in life to a distant cousin named Caecilia Pilea and subsequently had a son and a daughter, on whom he doted in a manner even Cicero found quite excessive. In Atticus’ household only two tenets governed daily life: ‘respect your mother, for she always knows best’, and ‘seek pleasure through delighting in the company of friends’. To this end, Atticus sought often to throw parties for his friends and their associates, in pursuit of the pleasure of good food and conversation. 

Atticus’ dinner parties were nevertheless few and far between these days; time spent overseas, in Athens or at his villa in Buthrotum, meant he was only ever in Rome for a small part of the season at a time. He liked to hold symposia during the spring, after the worst of the rains had passed, but before the cloying evening humidity of the summer had a chance to settle across the city’s better neighbourhoods. An early May evening, in his opinion, was the optimal setting for just such an occasion, and so prior to the festival of Vinalia the triclinium had undergone its annual refurbishment and redecoration. Then, a week before the day of the dinner, his greatest friends had been sent for by formal invitation and, one by one, arrived early on the appointed evening in jocular spirits, buoyed to a man by the promise of another of Atticus’ splendid dinner parties. 

The young Gallus, a promising poet and orator by day, but a puerile twenty five year-old gossip under cover of darkness and the encouragement of wine, was currently holding forth loudly on the subject of Caesar’s continuing sojourn in Egypt. Leaning precariously over the precipice of his couch, he was in the act of raising a knowing finger in the relation of another anecdote. 

"They say Cleopatra is carrying Caesar's child, and that if it is a boy he will be crowned Prince of Egypt,” he said, his elbow slipping off the couch with a jolt. 

"And much good it will do him,” Cicero opined dryly, “if his kingdom is to extend from one wall of Alexandria to the other.”

Brutus meanwhile, reclining to the right of their host, found himself wishing that Atticus would water his wine a little better before these soirees, and was reflecting that his mother would be absolutely, satisfyingly horrified to bear witness to the sort of company he was keeping. 

"I find it surprising that Caesar ought to have mated with Cleopatra in the first place,” Gallus mused thoughtfully, throwing a swift glance in Brutus’ direction. “He always seems to have preferred women of a distinctly patrician hue.”

“I have to say I'd have thought she’d be more to Antony's taste," Atticus agreed, cup suspended lazily in the Greek fashion between the fingers of one hand. “But then if the old stories about his dalliances with Nicomedes are to be believed, it should come as no surprise that Caesar has a taste for the exotic.”

“Oh, come, Atticus,” Cicero interrupted, “let us not pretend that Caesar’s sudden desire for the queen of Egypt is motivated by anything more than his lust for a throne. He realises he cannot get his hands on one in Rome, so he has found a tempting substitute in Alexandria.”

Gallus snorted into his wine. “He’s a cold fish, that’s for sure; it won’t be passion that’s set him onto her. He’d better not let her alone with Antony, or _he’ll_ have her on her back before the introductions have been made.” 

"You know,” chipped the recumbent Metellus, rousing himself from well-fed torpor with difficulty, red in the face from his efforts with the roasted capons, “It strikes me that Brutus hasn’t said much at all on the subject, yet he seems to understand Antony’s tastes far better than most these days."

An uncomfortable silence fell as Brutus looked up from his wine and absorbed the clumsy attempt at jocularity. His dalliance with Volumnia had not, despite Cicero’s dire warnings, been the making of another Sempronia, but it had become an embarrassing millstone around his neck, one which he had hoped to set down and forget. Metellus looked rather surprised by his own ill manners, but there was nothing Brutus would have liked less than an even clumsier apology, and tension hung in the air for some moments, un unwelcome guest.

Cicero adroitly disrupted the uneasy silence, and directed a withering look in Metellus’ direction. "When you have broadened your own tastes beyond strapping Gallic adolescents, Metellus, then perhaps we will seek your opinion."

The comment was greeted by hearty laughter, not least from red-faced Metellus, and Brutus was grateful to Cicero for the intercession. 

Atticus was also quick to raise his cup to Brutus in apology. “Let us turn to other matters.”

“The elections?” suggested Gallus, hopefully.

“Oh, for the days when a dinner party could simply be allowed to be a dinner party,” Cicero commented, provoking more laughter. 

Brutus smiled and looked into the depths of his wine cup, wondering where the slave bearing Atticus’ fine Etruscan krater might have got to. “Must every aspect of life these days still be dictated by politics?” he echoed privately, a murmured aside to his host.

“But, these days, what else is there?” Atticus countered quietly with a wry smile, and Brutus was forced to concede the point.

He would reflect later on the accuracy of Atticus’ observation. He would also think how unfair it was that, even in being proved right about Antony’s enduring loyalty to Caesar, he should have to suffer bearing witness to the evidence of his veracity concerning the other traits of Antony’s character. 

He was unable to do anything to prevent it, when he and Cicero were cornered guiltily on the steps of the senate chamber, in part due to the necessity of maintaining the façade of wary cordiality towards a man they both found to be utterly repellent. Nevertheless, he felt the prick of his conscience when Antony took Cicero’s hands between his own and sought to crush the very bones of him as a warning against future transgressions. As soon as Antony had exited the chamber, Brutus helped Cicero to his feet, offering a firm hand on his shoulder as a gesture of comfort, and making no reference at all to the tremor in Cicero’s injured fingers.

*

Young Gallus was absent from all the rest of Atticus’ parties for that season on account of an all-consuming passion, the object of which he liked to think remained a secret when in fact every gossip in the city knew he had been writing florid odes to the dubious glories of Volumnia Eutrapela.

“You haven’t thought to sanction Gallus for his hideous indiscretion,” Brutus pointed out a little too loudly, not long into a dinner during which he was seated next to Cicero. 

“So much the better if the delectable Volumnia keeps herself busy with a man of Gallus’ low standing, eh, Cicero?” 

Cicero flashed Metellus a look of mild irritation, “Just as you so succinctly put it.”

“Poor Gallus, with his poet’s soul,” said Atticus, laughing. “He thought himself terribly clever, calling her his Lycoris – as though nobody would work it out! He trails round the city after her like a pup, wagging his tail if she deigns to mete out the slightest bit of affection.”

He and Metellus sank into a ribald discussion of Gallus’ poetry, culminating in a dramatic reading from his latest set of verses. 

Cicero, already weary of the conversation and the company, glanced at Brutus beside him, who was leaning on one arm with his head drooping nearly onto Cicero’s shoulder. His cup dangled at a precarious angle off the side of the lectus; he had seemed distracted since the beginning of the evening and had been drinking Atticus’ wine as though it were water. Cicero had watched him with quiet concern and wondered, given Brutus’ father’s temperate character, who it was had given him his wilful, immoderate streak. 

“Do try not to fall asleep,” he murmured as Brutus’ elbow slipped and he nearly sent wine cascading onto Atticus’ floor.

“Sorry, Cicero,” he mumbled, righting himself with difficulty. “I’d nearly dozed off, there.”

Come the end of the evening, Metellus had done just that and was snoring gently with his head cushioned on one fleshy arm. The rest of the party was deep in earnest conversation, and when Cicero peered into his cup to realise it was empty he readily took it as his cue to leave. 

“Atticus, my friend,” he said, “I fear it’s time for me to make my weary way home.”

Atticus looked regretful as Cicero got to his feet, but knew better than to try to dissuade him. “Oh, well then, I suppose I shall have to let you go.”

Cicero gratefully said his farewells to the other guests and Atticus accompanied him to the atrium, summoning the lictors and extracting Cicero’s promise to pass on his best wishes to Tiro. 

Brutus chose that moment to rouse himself and join them.

“I think I ought to be leaving too, Atticus,” he announced in the general direction of the front door. He was swaying and Cicero winced in sympathy, thinking of the sore head he’d be suffering come the morning and his mother’s inevitable disapproval.

“Of course.” Atticus shot Cicero a glance communicating shared concerns. “Perhaps you’d be so good as to accompany Cicero as far as the Palatine?”

Cicero had been intending to retire to the house on the Argiletum that evening, given that Terentia would be at home on the Palatine and he was in no mood for an argument, nor for taking breakfast in frosty silence while his wife sniffed and huffed and glared at him for every breath he breathed. Nevertheless, he took a pitying look at Brutus, who looked fit to fall where he stood, and nodded his agreement. 

They said their farewells to Atticus and emerged into the street, and Cicero paused to adjust his attire, pulling his cloak tighter about himself. Around them, along the façade of Atticus’ house, torches burned in braces on the wall and two potted bay trees framed the doorway, clipped into the shape of perfect globes – to remind his Roman visitors that they did not have command of the entire world, at least just yet, Atticus joked. Beside the trees stood a pair of low benches to allow the mounting of horses. 

“At least I refrained from writing poetry,” Brutus murmured suddenly, apropos of nothing, and it took Cicero a leap of logic to conclude that he was referring to Gallus’ dalliance with Volumnia. 

“For that we can both be very grateful,” he agreed, thinking what a disaster it would have been if Brutus had ever thought himself in love with the dreadful woman. 

Brutus seemed unsteady on his feet; certainly he was standing a good deal nearer than propriety would demand. He put out a hand to steady himself and Cicero grasped his arm, alarmed, to find that Brutus sagged against him, muttering apologies and recriminations.

“I’m sorry Cicero, Atticus never properly waters his wine – ”

“And yet most of us will manage to find our way home unaided,” Cicero chided tartly. He gestured to the door slave, who hurried inside to send word to fetch Atticus’ litter-bearers. “Here, Brutus, sit.”

Brutus sank heavily onto the bench. “Forgive me, Cicero, forgive me.”

Cicero thought to make a clever remark regarding the nature of forgiveness, but settled for resting a hand on Brutus’ shoulder. He needn’t ask; it was already given.

***

**a.d. iii Id. Nov. 46**

“How are your hands?” Brutus remembered to ask when he met Cicero outside the Curia some months later. He knew that both of them, through private audience with Caesar, had separately been made aware of what would be expected of them today, when Antony would propose to elect Caesar sole consul for another unprecedented term. He hoped that Cicero might reply lightly and with humour, to dispel the deadening sense of absolute impotence.

"Apart from a week's inability to hold a quill, and worsened rheumatism come the next spell of wet weather, no doubt, Antony has left me surprisingly unaffected, considering how soft and pink we politicians' hands are,” Cicero replied with a wry grimace. Brutus felt vaguely disappointed, but nodded and began to adjust the folds of his toga to calm his failing nerves. 

Cicero, for his part, thought for a moment that Brutus intended to take the injured hands between his own, and shifted foolishly, nonplussed by the unexpected gesture of intimacy and dismayed by the quickening excitement he felt in anticipation of it. It was troubling to suffer such adolescent lapses of judgement where Brutus was concerned, nothing but a recipe for ridicule and humiliation in the long run. Clearing his throat as he realised his mistake, he turned his attention to the open doors of the senate chamber.

"Are you ready to get on with this sordid business?" he asked. Brutus nodded and they processed beneath the portico, prepared to support the motion that would, Cicero felt sure, seal the fate of the republic once and for all.

*

Later that afternoon, Cicero cradled his injured hand against his chest and tried to ease the incipient rheumatism in his knuckles – a habit, as it had become, in moments of tension. The fragments of an expensive Greek lamp lay at his feet, and his wife stood staring at him wide-eyed from the opposite side of the room, trembling and sagging in the wake of a bout of incandescent rage.

He raised his eyes from the mess of oil and broken pottery and lifted a hand to wipe imaginary creases from his tunic. Was it not enough, he wondered, that his wife regarded him with disdain each time they suffered to be in one another’s company, without the added ignominy of her very public displays of hostility towards Caesar and his associates? He may not be master of his own destiny, but by the gods, he had tried to be master in his own home. Turning on his heel, he made to leave the tablinium the way he had come some fraught minutes earlier. 

“How dare you turn your back on me!” Terentia cried, scrabbling, no doubt, for more crockery to throw.

Cicero sighed deeply and turned back to her with his hands spread in a gesture of weary surrender. “Terentia, I have listened to your complaints and withstood your interminable dissatisfaction at our lot in life for longer than any reasonable man might be expected to bear. I have no desire to become violent, but I fear I might not be able to contain myself, if I am subjected to your incessant shrewishness any longer.”

“If I am a shrew, it is because you drive me to it!”

Cicero threw up his hands in exasperation. “How could I possibly drive you to anything? I have given you your own house in the country to allow you your freedom, you are never _here_ for me to - ”

“You have given me nothing which was not bought with my own money!”

As soon as the words tumbled from her mouth, Terentia clapped her hands to her face in horror. Cicero’s expression turned cold as her words hung in the air between them, heavy with the weight of years of unspoken resentment. He had known of Terentia’s distaste for his borrowing her family’s money in the early days of their marriage, and her hatred of having during his exile to sell jewellery to settle household debts, but had never thought she would dare to fling it at him like a weapon, even in one of her frequent fits of passion. Terentia, meanwhile, had begun once more to tremble, and cowered away from the heavy disdain in the words which Cicero next spoke. 

“The day has long since passed when I relied on your money to finance my advancement, Terentia, and your personality, such as it has become these days, offers little else in the way of encouragement to maintain a marriage.”

Terentia laughed nervously. “You think threats of divorce will chasten me? I have ten times the pride and one hundred times the dignity!”

“Then let your pride and your dignity keep you happy,” Cicero sighed, too tired to struggle any longer against the tide of her disappointment, “as I am clearly no longer able.”

It was an unimpressive end to what had once been the most efficient and useful of marriages. As Cicero walked away he allowed Tiro to place a thick cloak around his shoulders, and they swept out into the damp early evening. They returned to the old house on the Argiletum and Cicero instructed Tiro to begin to draft a divorce contract, allowing Terentia all the money she had leant to his political career in its infancy, along with significant interest. 

The following Spring, when a letter arrived from the secretary of his daughter’s former husband, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, informing him of his beloved Tullia’s death following the birth of her second son, Terentia had long since departed for the Bay of Neapolis and set up her household at a villa in Misenum. With Atticus at his Illyrian villa, it seemed there was no one left in Rome but Tiro to comfort Cicero in his grief.

*

_M. Junius Brutus, M. Tullius Cicero S.D._

_Cicero, allow me to express my deepest sadness at the news of the death of your daughter. You spoke to me of Tullia many years ago in Greece, after which I had the privilege of meeting her a number of times, on each of which occasion I was struck by the intelligence of her conversation and the uncanny perspicacity of her political insight. She seemed, as the common saying goes, a fig fallen not far from the tree. I am unable to comprehend the depth of your loss, and wish there were some small comfort my words could bring you in your distress. I beg you to remember me your friend, as always._

_Roma. a.d. vi Id. Mar. 45_

***


	3. On a Knife's Edge

** Chapter 2  
In Acie Cultri **

_Cicero Bruto S.D.,_

_My dear Brutus, forgive my writing to you so belatedly, without regard for the usual civilities and with so little habit of late of calling on you for dinner. Your letter was very welcome, a light in the depth of the very darkest of nights. It seems to me that I have been adrift on a dark ocean for many weeks. Poor Atticus has been overburdened by the outpourings of my grief – since he himself has endured Pilea’s death, we have found much in common to unite us in our unhappiness. I have left off replying to your letter simply because I could not have written sensibly or with any proper sense of gratitude for your kindness before now without becoming quite overwhelmed._

_You must forgive, also, my absence from the city and from politics, which I will shortly abandon in favour of my family farm in Tusculum. Tullia’s loss has been as the extinguishing of nearly the last light left for me in Rome, and I have lost all my appetite for intrigue. I have had quite enough wrangling to contend with, in any case, in settling the matter of my daughter’s wedding money with Dolabella, that most unfortunate of sons-in-law. I would not see a sestertius of it swell his funds for bribery, but the law is the law and I am quite lacking the energy to try to alter it._

_I hope to find life in the country a welcome distraction from other affairs in Rome, which I will abandon not only through melancholia but also through disgust. I shall not condescend to enter the senate house until matters are greatly resolved with regards to the latest constitutional outrages. Were you presently in Italy I would invite you to visit me, though I fear I would make for poor and depressed company. It is my intention to return to Rome late in the autumn, at which time you may expect an invitation to dinner. Perhaps Atticus can be prevailed upon to break with his usual tradition and begin the party season a few months early._

_Please extend my good wishes to your mother and remember me yourself with some small measure of affection._

_Roma. Id. Apr. 45_

*

**a.d. ix Kal. Oct. 45**

"Still here?” Brutus enquired with a smile when he came across Cicero on the steps leading up to the curia. “I thought you were retiring to the country as a point of honour."

Cicero smiled, though it was the slightly greasy sort of smile which Brutus recognised as one of Cicero’s attempts to curry favour, rather than a genuine expression of pleasure at his company. "You do right to mock me. You make me feel small."

"A joke, old man? I'm always happy for your company."

They made their way up the steps, and Brutus was struck by the unusual atmosphere; a frisson of excitement ran through the assembled throng which spoke of fresh or impending scandal. He might have commented, had Cicero not pre-empted him by leaning forward eagerly and taking him by the arm. "So, why didn't you tell me beforehand? I could have been of assistance, perhaps.”

"What are you talking about?" 

He had little enough patience at the best of times with Cicero in this cryptic mood, and last night he had slept little, troubled by the spectre of Quintus Pompey, darkening his doorway and taking advantage of his unwilling hospitality. The man had appeared some time after the celebrations for Neptunalia, and now hung around the house like an injured dog, angry and spiteful, snapping at anyone who came too near. He spent too long in conference with Servilia for Brutus’ liking; what they could have to talk about, Brutus was quite sure he didn’t know. His only thought was that perhaps it soothed his mother to have another hurt, vengeful creature about the place, to keep her company in her misery.

Cicero seemed oblivious and made a small noise of impatience. "Everyone is reading it," he said, passing Brutus a folded manuscript. "I saw some temple prostitutes with a copy."

"'The call to virtue'," Brutus read slowly, with a raised eyebrow.

"The writing is adequate - which is something we should talk about - but the sentiments are full of grace and bravery."

Brutus favoured Cicero with a brief glance, and then read on with mounting alarm. "'Sons of the Republic, blood of our forefathers calls you to honour the memory and emulate the deeds of Porcius Cato, the last true Roman...' Who wrote this?"

"You did," Cicero said incredulously and turned over the manuscript to show Brutus his own name, written in Tiro’s familiar, neat hand.

"Gods beneath us," Brutus said after a long moment. He stared in horror at the mark, stark and unforgiving against the page, and could think to do nothing but close his fist around the document and set off in search of an explanation.

Cicero watched him go, before turning thoughtfully to Tiro and requesting him to make another copy of the document still pinned to the senate door.

*

Brutus strode through the Campus Martius and its little murmuring groups of readers as a scythe cutting through weeds. The lictors were wise to fall behind and dog his steps from a distance, because Brutus would happily have grappled with any of them at that moment, glad of someone to beat.

He did not anticipate the presence of an unwelcome visitor when he arrived home, brushed aside the attendant at the front door and strode into the atrium. He was wrong-footed by the confounding familiarity of that visitor’s profile when he turned with an easy smile and laughed in response to something Quintus had murmured in his ear. 

Of course, he reflected some hours later, while he waited at Cicero’s house for his friend’s return, he ought to have recognised the writing style: the bald, fervent republicanism of the thing, and the inelegant but earnest expression of it. They had, after all, spent five years in each others’ company as boys, learning their philosophy and being taught the skills of sophistry and persuasion. He ought to have realised the hand at work, and to have guessed at Cassius’ involvement.

And yet he had been utterly unprepared for his mother’s casual introduction, as though the two of them had only ever been the barest of acquaintances: “You know Cassius.”

"It's been too long," Cassius said, smiling gently.

"You will excuse me if I speak with my mother privately," Brutus had replied. His rage had not abated and he was incapable of exchanging pleasantries until he had had the matter of the letter out and confirmed his suspicions. Of course Cassius acquiesced, and did so graciously, as though he had not already insinuated his way into Brutus' household without observing even the most basic of courtesies.

Brutus had not seen Cassius for nearly ten years, not since the marriage to his sister and their departure for Syria. There had been letters, at first: adolescent, dreadful things, full of oaths and declamations and lyrical expressions of their deepest longing for one another, but those had slowed to a trickle of infrequent, impersonal communications as their passion had withered, as youthful passion always does, and eventually their letters had ceased altogether around the time of Brutus’ own marriage. Brutus had not even written after Pharsalus, when Cassius had been defeated on his way to treaty with the king of Pontus, and neither had Cassius; they were, therefore, both at fault for the lapse and decline of their correspondence. Brutus was nevertheless fairly sure that, had he arrived in Antioch with the intention of visiting Cassius’ house and penning inflammatory prose in his name, he might have sent a letter ahead out of good manners at the very least.

The argument with his mother was as brief as it was unsatisfactory and immediately afterwards he left for Cicero’s, desirous of counsel and a few sympathetic words.

*

Cicero swept through the atrium of the house on the Argiletum with Tiro at his heel bearing the habitual document case required of his station as Cicero’s secretary. The case had become increasingly redundant since the ignominy of Cicero’s return from Pompey’s camp in Greece and the waning of his business with the law, but today the significance of the document it contained, the one which Cicero had had Tiro transcribe twice, could not be understated. Tiro followed his friend and master across the atrium and observed with satisfaction the return of purpose to Cicero’s step. It had been absent for too long.

“Good afternoon, my dear Brutus. I trust you are in good spirits.” 

One glance at Brutus bowed head and hunched shoulders as he entered the room had been enough to confirm that this was not the case, and Cicero was fairly certain he had already discerned the root of Brutus’ troubles. In truth, he ought to have realised it the moment he had seen the document pinned to the senate doors – the style was uncharacteristic of Brutus’ usually spartan elegance of language.

Brutus looked up wearily, his frown deepening even as he got to his feet in greeting. “Cicero, I have rarely been in worse spirits. This is the end for me in Rome; I may as well throw myself into the Tiber, before Antony arrives with an offer to do it for me.”

Cicero held up his hand to halt him before he could have a chance to sink into abject despondency and turned to relieve Tiro of the document case. “You may go, Tiro,” he said kindly. “Return home if you wish and continue with your transcription of Lysias against Eratosthenes; I don’t imagine I shall be home before dinner.”

“You should take extra care tonight if you return to the Palatine; there are agitants abroad in the forum.”

Cicero waved his hand, dismissing Tiro’s advice with a wry smile. “I doubt any of them would bother with a weary old senator such as I, Tiro. Don’t fuss.”

Tiro inclined his head and, after some hesitation, retreated. Cicero made certain he had gone before turning back to Brutus and gesturing for him to resume his seat.

“You have discovered who was responsible for the letter, then, I presume?” he asked without further preamble, settling himself into a chair at the other side of the desk.

“It was my mother,” Brutus replied grimly. “As you had no doubt already guessed, it was my mother and Cassius.”

Cicero nodded. “Well, one could say there are worse documents to have one’s name ascribed to.”

“On the contrary; I fail to see how it could be much worse at all.” 

“I suppose it would be pointless to list the ways the letter’s contents might have been far more incriminating? You must at least admit the nobility of its sentiment, however inelegantly expressed.”

“It was an incitement to civil disorder and a statement of outright defiance as far as Caesar’s concerned.”

“I confess I’d never realised the depth of your mother’s desire for revenge,” Cicero agreed wryly, raising an eyebrow. 

Brutus’ expression darkened and he was suddenly out of his seat once more, pacing the floor. 

“It’s bad enough she has that _animal_ , Quintus, lodging in our house, but to foment this sort of rebellion, and to sign her own son’s name to it – she can’t truly intend to see me killed, but I find I increasingly have reason to wonder...”

“And you had no idea she was in cahoots with Cassius?”

“I hadn’t seen him since he married my sister – you know he’s spent some years in the Provinces, and in exile after the business with the Pontians. He’s an old friend to me, of course, but I had no idea he was anything more to my mother than an incidental son-in-law.”

Cicero nodded thoughtfully. “It will be Quintus, I expect… The little maniac’s vitriol must be extremely attractive to a certain type of politician.”

“Gods beneath us, Cicero, we have both seen what _he_ is capable of! And he is in _my_ house, drinking my wine, at a table surrounded by my friends and relations!”

Cicero mirrored Brutus’ expression of distaste at the thought of Pompey’s odious son. “You know I have urged you simply to turn him out.”

Brutus favoured Cicero with a dry glance. “My mother would only have the slaves disregard my instructions. Or she would somehow affect to have _me_ evicted from my own home; I’m not sure which would be the more humiliating. I don’t mean to impose, Cicero,” he added as an afterthought, “but I’ve been here nearly an hour and I’m desperate for a drink.”

“Forgive me; all this talk of conspiracy has made me forget my manners.” Cicero called for a slave, and repeated Brutus’ request for wine. “Only one cup,” he added, then turned his attention to the document case before him on the table. He drew out a single sheet, covered on one side with Tiro’s distinctive shorthand, and on the other by a fair copy of the letter. “I had Tiro take down a second transcription before Antony tore down every copy.” 

“Then you might as well throw it on the fire; it would be unwise to have a copy in your possession, in case Caesar decides to take the matter further. I’d not wish you to be implicated in this farce, even if I can’t avoid it myself.”

Cicero appeared to consider this. “What does Caesar have to say?”

“I haven’t seen him. I dread to think, after last time.”

“Last time, if you remember, he embraced you like a wayward son.”

“And what about his promise in front of the senate? ‘Oppose me and Rome will not forgive you a second time’. You know full well that speech was aimed squarely at the two of us. And now, with my name being used in this way...”

“If you’re after my opinion,” Cicero said carefully, “I’d suggest that it would be a grave mistake to be _unduly_ wary of Caesar.”

“Oh.” Brutus sat down heavily and took a grateful mouthful of wine. He sighed with pleasure – Cicero could always be relied upon to keep good wine in case of emergencies. “Then of whom?”

Cicero pursed his lips and chose his next words carefully. “They say Cassius is as hard-line a defender of the republic as ever, and he can be extremely persuasive, so I’m told, when he wants to be. Never mind Quintus or Caesar, I suspect your Cassius might be the one you ought to watch.”

“Each of we senators speaks in defence of the republic,” Brutus pointed out with a shake of his head, falling with galling ease into the position of defending Cassius to his detractors – ever was it thus, he thought wryly. “You can’t find fault with his hatred of tyranny, Cicero.”

“My dear boy, I am as staunch a republican as the next man. There are simply limits to my fervour for upholding the constitution.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I’m sure Cassius’ enthusiasm for democracy will be tempered by his regard for his own personal safety.” Cicero gave a small self-deprecating smile. “That is the only sensible model of behaviour, after all.”

Brutus frowned, uncomfortable, as he always was, with Cicero’s habitually frank admission of his own cowardice. “Not all of us have come to compromise our principles so readily, Cicero.”

“Then good luck to him,” Cicero conceded lightly, steering the conversation away from an unnecessary confrontation. “After all, you are far braver and younger men than I.”

*

On Cicero’s advice, Brutus sought out Caesar the next day to attempt a stumbling and effusive declaration of his innocence. It was difficult for Brutus, who had looked to Caesar almost as a son to a father, to endure his distant, coolly dismissive response, heavy with suspicion and the unspoken knowledge that a level of trust had been breached that could not quite be reforged. He watched with a heavy heart as Caesar left the curia without a backward glance, and waited until the other praetors and their lictors had left for the Forum before making his own way out onto the Campus Martius.

He stumbled home wishing to return to a quiet house and an uninterrupted evening in which to mull over his position in the city, only to find his mother at the centre of a cyclone of activity, conducting an army of slaves and having her hair dressed before a large mirror in the shaded part of the garden.

“Mother, what’s going on?”

She turned to him and smiled, and Brutus suffered a horrible sense of precognition that between she and Cassius he would be caught like a rabbit in a snare. She had been trying for months to turn the house into a crucible of subversive politics, and he ought to have put a stop to it long ago.

“A dinner party,” she replied lightly, “in honour of our guests.”

He was, for a moment, quite incapable of speech. Anger filtered through his incredulity as he recalled his light-hearted comment to Cicero about his mother fomenting revolt as a means of having him killed. Yes, indeed, it seemed he did have reason to begin to wonder. 

“Do you realise I have just come from speaking with Caesar, assuring him of my unswerving loyalty?” he demanded, coming to stand before her as she admired her hair piece with the aid of a second mirror. “I have done my utmost to convince him of my innocence over the business with that damned letter, and now you are organising dinner parties as though nothing had happened!”

She looked at him with shrewd disappointment. “You’ve humbled yourself to him, he has accepted the proof of your _loyalty_. What reason can Caesar possibly have to doubt you?”

"He suspects me, mother, despite his assurances to the contrary! I _cannot_ be seen to associate with Pompey's son!"

"Caesar has no idea he is even alive, let alone in Rome under this roof - ”

Brutus laughed mirthlessly and closed his eyes at the memory of Antony’s promise in the senate, his fingers tight and cruel around Cicero’s wrists. “If a pigeon died on the Aventine, mother – no doubt if a pigeon were to shit without Caesar’s permission – you can be sure Antony would have heard about it.”

Servilia regarded him with stony equanimity and Brutus felt as though he were ten years old again, ridiculously shamed by his use of coarse language in front of his mother. She was no stranger to calling the gods from the heavens with curses when one of the jealous rages took hold of her. 

“There is no call for vulgarity,” she said in a low, firm voice. It was a dangerous tone, one of determination, and Brutus found he was suddenly no longer in the mood for an argument. He felt so very, very tired of intrigues and misunderstandings and, after all, he was hungry. When all the world was conspiring to drive him to an early grave, was it too much for a man simply to have the luxury of sitting down to a quiet dinner? 

He sighed deeply and raised his hands in a gesture of impotent and weary surrender.

“No, Mother, there is no need for an argument.” He cast about for a suitable thing to say, to make clear his reluctance to become complicit in welcoming Cassius – let alone Quintus – back to the city. Failing that, he offered her a tight, unhappy smile. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

*

The meal was a lengthy and unpleasant affair. Although Brutus had agreed to attend, he felt no qualms about making his displeasure known, and spent the evening brooding in silence, showing little interest in his guests' conversation. To his right reclined his mother, and next to her was Servilius Casca, a distant relation, whom Brutus had always disliked on account of his insufferable arrogance. Impetuous and hot-headed, Casca was ill at ease in company which did not display immediate appreciation of his wit and conversation, and often spent the latter part of dinner parties in a sulk. That night, Servilia seemed to be making an effort to please him, laughing at his every remark and listening attentively to his laboured jokes.

To Brutus’ left sat Cassius, in the correct position for a member of the family, and he was propped on one arm as though ready to spring to his feet at the first sign of approaching danger. He reminded Brutus of a roe deer, always in anticipation of the hunter – except that he also exuded an air of quiet, predatory calculation, which made his proximity unpleasant and difficult to abide. 

The rest of the party was made up by other Senators – no wives were accompanying them tonight, and Servilia was the lone woman in the room. It was a role which had always suited her; she was swift to flash with jealousy in the presence of other women, and easier in the company of men. At the far end of the left-hand couch, in the least desirable position, sat the least desirable guest; Quintus Pompey, who hung on the edge of his seat and watched the rest of the guests with an expression like a hyena, while listening intently to their conversation. There was no Cicero, of course. Brutus envied him his evenings alone in his house away from the Palatine, in the country, or in Atticus’ easy company, and missed him now, when his presence would have been such a great relief.

“Casca was just expressing his disgust that you should have been overlooked in this latest round of promotions, Cassius,” his mother was saying as he turned his attention back to the conversation. She laid a solicitous hand on Casca’s arm for the briefest moment as though to punctuate her point.

Cassius smiled easily at her, “It’s senseless to work oneself into a rage at being slighted by a tyrant.”

“Well, I think it’s a disgrace!” Casca announced. “You’re a fine man, Cassius, Caesar has no right to overlook you. And what about Brutus!”

“Yes,” Quintus interjected thickly, leering at him from the opposite side of the room, “what about Caesar’s loyal friend?”

“You’ll hear nothing from Brutus where his friend Caesar is concerned,” Cassius warned lightly, with a provocative sideways smile.

Brutus glanced up at his erstwhile friend and resented him, once more, for presuming upon the fond memories Brutus still treasured of the time they had shared in their youth in assuming this air of false familiarity. The boy he had once loved so well had grown old in the years since they had last seen each other, and Brutus thought swiftly and unforgivingly that he despised Cassius for it.

“You’re right, Cassius,” he agreed. “I’m not keen to betray Caesar’s trust.”

Cassius smiled at him. “Not a second time, at least,” he said quietly, as though it were a joke only the two of them understood. 

“I notice Cicero’s been absent from the senate rather a lot recently,” Casca observed before Brutus could reply. “The countryside must be brimming with disgruntled landowners for him to stay away so long.”

“It’s no loss to the city if Cicero stays in the country indefinitely,” Cimber said scornfully from his position beside Quintus. “He’s been little enough use thus far.”

“Use for what, exactly?” Brutus asked slowly, watching the uneasy expression which fell across Cimber’s thin face as he glanced at Cassius and lowered his gaze to the dish of pomegranates before him on the table.

Cassius laughed gently, setting Brutus on edge, and laid a proprietary hand on his arm. “Now, now, Cimber. Cicero would be among friends, if he were here.”

“What a shame he is not,” Quintus proclaimed loudly from the end of the far lectus. “I would have taken great pleasure in spitting in the old fool’s eye.”

Brutus tore his arm from Cassius’ grasp and got to his feet, on the verge of abandoning all semblance of propriety and leaping at Quintus, imagining the savage pleasure of pummelling his face into the floor tiles. One look at Quintus’ expression told him the wretch would have found satisfaction in provoking him, so he turned to his mother, who was frowning indulgently as though Quintus were a misbehaving child. He took a deep breath to steady himself.

“I have had my fill of this dinner party, Mother,” he said as coolly as he was able, needing to remove himself from the room before he was forced to strike out at any one of the fools sitting before him. “I believe the wine has turned my mood rather sour.”

She nodded and did not try to prevent him, and he retired to the tablinium, ignoring Eleni when she asked whether he might like her to light the lamps. She summoned the slave regardless, and then the kitchen girl, who brought a dish of figs and more wine. Brutus ignored it, for his head rang as it was; Caesar’s earlier words and the clamouring of his mother and her guests were fit to make his skull crack open like a walnut. He sat upon the chair behind his father’s desk and sank his head into his hands, wishing he could block out the distant echo of his mother’s peals of artful, girlish laughter as she flattered Casca and made a pet out of Quintus.

The only thing he could think to do for a diversion was to read something to calm his temper. His uncle’s library of philosophical works sat in rows of fat papyrus scrolls upon shelves in the corner of the room; Brutus had added to the collection steadily over the years since his return from the academy, but he had no desire now to read one of Cicero’s tracts on rhetoric, so he selected one of the older texts and returned with it to the table.

The words were familiar, but his mind was too agitated to settle into their comforting rhythm. His concentration soon ebbed, and he found himself staring vacantly at the pages in front of him, imagining the letters running together until a great pool of ink coalesced and dribbled onto the desk.

“You know, when we were younger, you always refused to read Plato when you were in a bad mood. I wonder if that’s still true.”

Brutus looked up, annoyed by the disturbance, and found Cassius watching him from the doorway, a smile at the corner of his lips. Frowning, he bowed his head once more to his reading. “It isn’t,” he replied shortly. “I was a child; children do foolish things.”

It was meant to wound Cassius, and remind him that the days of their affection for one another were a distant memory, but Cassius’ smile only widened. Brutus remembered him as he had been when they were younger, and the time they had spent as friends at Ateocles’ academy in Greece. He had always admired the elder boy for his cynicism and worldly disregard for the philosophical limits of a good argument. Whatever Cassius’ crimes against him more recently, perhaps it was impossible for Brutus to forget the happy days they had spent together reciting poetry and learning the art of oratory. Together, they had been masters of their own destinies. Then had come marriage, and magistracies abroad, and the years that had passed since they last saw one another. 

“Is it the _Phaedrus_ , then?” Cassius enquired gently, coming towards him.

“No,” Brutus lied, tucking the pages inside their leather case. It felt depressing to be so predictable.

Ensconced behind the table, he watched Cassius move across the room with what seemed an incongruously feline kind of grace. He thought, briefly, of a Macedonian lion, but dismissed it as too predatory an association because the expression on Cassius’ face was now one of concern, and even of something infinitely more tender. 

“You always did favour it,” Cassius said fondly. “Even when we ridiculed you for your idealism, and called you old Ateocles’ catamite, you persisted.”

“I had an unrivalled capacity for stubbornness even then, as I’m sure you remember,” Brutus replied, frowning to prevent himself from smiling at the memory.

“I remember that you were brilliant in most of our lessons,” Cassius, casting him a fond look. “Top of the class.”

Brutus frown grew deeper, unaccustomed as he was to flattery. “I’m afraid I must have proved to be nothing but a disappointment since then, in that case.”

Cassius sighed and came to stand beside Brutus’ chair, as though wanting to read the text over his shoulder. “You haven’t changed,” he murmured. “What will it take to convince you of your worth?”

He laid a hand on Brutus’ arm and Brutus leaned into the touch, suddenly awash with loneliness. “It has been made more than clear for years,” he said, surprised that Cassius’ touch should feel so familiar after so many years of its absence, “that I have worth inasmuch as I have a name, and a lineage, and some great, awful destiny yet to fulfil.”

“That wasn’t what I meant at all.”

Cassius’ words were slow, his hand now a gentle, comforting pressure on the curve of Brutus’ back. Brutus glanced up at him uncertainly. 

Cassius regarded him with a gentle smile, and Brutus felt faintly puzzled, as he always had been when they were younger, by the realisation that Cassius, of all people, should still find something about him worthy of prolonged appraisal. 

“I hope, for your sake, my sister never catches you paying me compliments like this,” he said for lack of anything more meaningful with which to fill the silence, and because thanking Cassius seemed entirely inappropriate.

Cassius laughed, and lifted his hand after a final squeeze of Brutus’ shoulder. He paused in the doorway on his way back to the triclinium. “Well, then. Next time I do, I’ll make sure she’s nowhere nearby.”

*

Two streets away, under the watchful instruction of the head of the household slaves, lamps were being dowsed for the night and the front door barred. In the cubiculum, Atia of the Julii lay naked upon the bed.

“Come now,” she purred, extending her leg to draw her foot over Antony’s tensed thigh. “You can’t be jealous. Caesar loves you better than anyone.”

He ignored her and leaned forward to stare belligerently into the mirror hanging over the dressing table. “It’s that sly old bitch Servilia. She’s got Quintus Pompey hanging off her teat like a she-wolf with a pup, and no end of whinging senators coming to call on her, day and night.”

Atia’s expression turned sullen at the mention of Servilia and she flopped back onto the pillows, winding a strand of hair around her finger with practiced indifference.

“Cassius is back from Syria,” Antony told her.

“Cassius, the lanky Longinus married to Servilia’s unfortunate daughter? What of it?”

“He and Brutus used to be thick as thieves, as close as Castor and Pollux. Supercilious little shit’s always thought himself a cut above the likes of me.” 

“Well, then, have Caesar send them both to Macedonia, let them fuck goats all day. Come to bed.”

Antony turned to her with a triumphant smile. “Oh, Caesar’ll have Brutus out of the city by the end of the month. Every street corner’ll hold a reason for him to get Brutus as far away from Rome as possible.”

Atia stretched, making a display of herself for his pleasure. He pounced, pinning her to the bed with hands around her wrists and a strong thigh between her own.

*

"Erase that," Brutus instructed, glancing unfavourably on yet another piece of graffiti depicting himself with a knife at Caesar’s back.

Around the corner, appearing out of nowhere as he seemed to have acquired a habit of doing, came Cassius. Brutus did not bother to feign surprise. "Cassius."

"You'll do no good; the image is on every wall, on every hill.” Cassius smiled at Brutus with a glint in his eye. “Don't worry about those scribbles, King Caesar knows you're his loyal friend."

"Oh, I'm not worried about that," Brutus replied, finding it easier to slip into the familiar rhythm of their old banter and ignoring Cassius' pointed jibe. "It's just, do I truly look like that?"

"It's near," Cassius said with a wider smile.

"It's tragic."

"Mm-hm. But an image cannot capture your vim, your noble vitality..." Brutus fixed him with a look he had often found cause to use during Cassius’ days of writing florid poetry. "I speak only what's true! You have that grace in action they say your noble ancestor had. That's why the plebs put you on the walls; they see him in you."

"They see my wretched name, that's all. Simpletons. Let us speak of something else."

Cassius would not be put off, and dogged Brutus’ steps as he emerged onto the street. "There's weight in names, isn't there?"

Brutus smiled. "You may call a cat a fish, but it will not swim."

"The plebs love liberty. In your name - "

"The plebs would not pluck a hair for liberty. The plebs like to see their betters fight. It's cheaper than the theatre and the blood is real."

"Come," Cassius said suddenly, taking him by the arm. "Come here with me." 

Brutus found himself propelled across the portico and into the curia, where the senate would meet until the new senate house in the Forum had been completed, and where Caesar’s new consular chair had been positioned, ready for use the following day. 

"Look, now; look at that."

"It is a chair, what of it?"

"Chair," Cassius scoffed. "It is a throne."

"I believe thrones are generally more decorative. That is decidedly plain and chair-like."

"Are you blind?" Cassius demanded. 

As ever, there had been some sort of devious point to Cassius’ flattery and conversation. Brutus' patience with the charade was beginning to wear thin. "Do not become hysterical."

"Your mother said you were a coward; am I to believe her?"

Though Brutus resented the pretence of friendship, he was wounded to hear Cassius speak to him so coldly. "My mother is very unhappy." 

Cassius regarded him silently for a moment. "Forgive me, I spoke in anger."

"I am no coward," Brutus told him, incensed and bewildered by this latest turn in Cassius’ demeanour towards him. "Nor am I blind. I know what Caesar is; I can see. But I have pledged myself his friend - " Cassius rolled his eyes in disbelief, " - no, I _am_ his friend."

"So for friendship, you'd let the republic die?"

"I am just a man! The life or death of the republic is not in my hands!"

“You are precisely wrong," Cassius said quietly, looking him directly in the eye. "The Republic _is_ in your hands." He placed his hands on Brutus' shoulders and came closer. "The people will not accept a tyrant's death unless a Brutus holds the knife."

Brutus knocked his hands away. "You have gone too far."

"He has to die," Cassius insisted, nodding as though he knew he was right, as though he expected Brutus to fall into agreement. "You know him; you know he'd never accept exile. He has to die."

Brutus lunged for Cassius and grabbed handfuls of his tunic, burning with anger as Cassius spoke what Brutus had never dared to admit. For a long moment they stood, Cassius squared as though he expected Brutus to hit him. But Brutus found he was too cowardly even for that, and turned to run from the curia.

Cassius started after him. "Wait, friend. Wait!"

Brutus ignored him and strode into the street, where his lictors were waiting. Cassius was forced to follow him, repeating his name, until, taking a handful of Brutus' tunic, he propelled him into a corner beside a market vendor's stall, baskets full of gourds swaying above them.

"Brutus. Brutus, let's not tarnish twenty years of friendship over these disagreements. I’m not Quintus - full of vengeance and anger. I am a senator, like you, and I have done my duty to Rome. But you must think on it. The time has come to decide where your loyalties lie."

Brutus regarded him silently, brimming with recriminations which would not come to words. He shook himself loose of Cassius' grasp and escaped into the street.

He had no desire to return home, to face his mother, his wife, or any of his sisters. He thought longingly of going to Cicero’s house on the Argiletum, but he would not have Cicero implicated in treachery by repeating Cassius' arguments to him. In despair, he headed aimlessly into the city, in pursuit of a means to rid his head of Cassius’ words, blind to the streets around him and the fresh graffiti upon every wall.

***


	4. The Die Is Cast

  
**Chapter 3  
Alea Iacta Est**

_Quod est, eo decet uti; et quicquid agas, agere pro viribus._ \- What one has, one ought to use; and whatever one does one should do with all one’s might.  
Cicero, De Senectute IX

**a.d. vii Kal. Feb. 44**

_"I need someone I can trust."_

Corrupted by wine, Caesar’s words began to sound like weapons shaped deliberately to wound. Brutus realised to his dismay that his mother had been vindicated; it seemed that to have humbled himself all those years ago in Greece had been needlessly humiliating. He wished he had fallen on his sword after Pharsalus and saved himself these years of betraying his principles for fear of losing Caesar’s hard-won trust – trust which, it seemed, had never been his to lose in the first place.

After the disastrous end to the evening’s meeting he had quarrelled with his lictors and stumbled home distressed and alone, through streets so empty it hinted at the unrest growing amongst the street gangs of the Subura, protection racketeers and market tradesmen made nervous and chased from the streets into the back rooms of taverns. He took a meandering route through old-money mansions along the Via Sacra and arrived home in the middle of the night, where he refused the slave’s offer of wine or water and strode to the tablinium with the intention of locking himself away until the morning. 

“Admit no one,” he instructed the boy who hurried to precede him and began lighting lamps. “If my mother asks, I am not at home.”

The boy nodded and gratefully withdrew, and Brutus sank heavily into his uncle’s chair behind the desk. For a few brief moments he rested his head in his hands and wondered what his ancestors would make of him, whether they would censure him for his loyalty to Caesar. Loyalty was just as admirable a virtue in a man as love of the republic – perhaps the aberration was to follow either course blindly, something of which he and Cassius were equally guilty.

He took a sheaf of papyrus from the desk. It was smooth and warm, the heavy kind which the historians favoured because it sat happily upon shelves and seemed keen to last into posterity. Bowing his head, he began to write a letter to Cicero, whose counsel he craved but could not risk seeking. 

_Brutus Cicero SD._

_Cicero, it troubles me that lately we have not been such friends as we once were. You have done well to withdraw yourself from business in the senate, and I have been foolish to place my trust in Caesar. To my detriment, at Pharsalus I followed the path you suggested and I find now that I have great cause to regret it. My name, I am told, forbids me to suffer a tyrant, and Caesar has this evening proven himself unworthy of the loyalty which I have shown him in the past. You know what must come next; it is the burden of my ancestry to stand in opposition to tyranny and, having already abandoned my principles, I find that my name is all I have left to uphold._

_You once warned me of Cassius’ fervour for the republic and I reminded you that that, in itself, was not a crime. He and I are brothers, and closer even, and I give him absolute trust in the conviction of his actions on the strength of that and of our many years of friendship. After the deed is done, I will not make any claim to authority. My actions will be carried out in the name of the senate, and you must bring the state to order and steer it safely until it is fit to govern itself. Ever since the Gracchi we have suffered greatly through the rise of popular men; the letter of the law must no longer be permissive to corruption, and I trust you with the task of bringing about its emancipation from the yoke of bribery and greed._

_I ask your forgiveness for my decision not to enlist your help with the former part of my undertaking. It is no duty for you – truth ought to be a virtuous supplicant in the temple, not a bloodied wolf growling at its door. Besides which, you value your moderate position, and that is something which I am loathe to compromise._

_You once offered me the use of your farm in the country in contemplation of our flight from Pompey’s camp, and I find myself wondering now whether, in flight from Rome, you might permit me belatedly to accept. I am tired of the city and of politics and even of my duty to the republic. I should very much like to spend the rest of my days occupied by the farming of peaches, if such a thing were possible. I write in the very absence of hope._

Having completed the closing paragraph he struck through everything which preceded it and sank his head into his hands once more, remaining there until morning, when he fed the papyrus into the fire and went to find his mother.

*

It was difficult not to feel aggrieved that the details of the conspiracy had already been almost entirely decided upon, and required his input only insofar as requiring the legitimacy afforded to it by the addition of his name. He took part in what followed, but balked at the apparent glee with which the deed itself was discussed – Quintus in particular seemed to delight in thinking up horrific ways in which it might be enacted, and took pleasure in Brutus’ pale-faced disgust at his bloodthirstiness. As always, Servilia circled the room like a warship before a battle, and was the only one who could lay a hand on Quintus’ shoulder to calm him. Often she let him talk, apparently willing to indulge his gruesome fantasies, like a mother amused by the precociousness of a child.

At a tense gathering one damp, blustery afternoon, talk turned to those it would be prudent to recruit, to promote the conspiracy in the senate in the aftermath of the deed, and to bolster numbers in the act itself. Brutus had listened to many of the suggestions with distant equanimity, but when Cimber spoke up with a sudden, shrewd expression on his long face, he realised he would not be able to remain silent much longer.

“We’ve not yet talked about Cicero. Recruit Cicero, and it’s as good as a senatorial decree – ”

Brutus looked at him sharply. “No. Cicero is not to be involved.”

Cassius threw him a look of surprised calculation, but Casca pre-empted any comment by clambering to his feet and voicing his opinion. 

“Why not? He’s the best proponent we could have; the pedarii would support us without question at Cicero’s behest.”

Brutus had anticipated this argument, and come prepared to answer it. “Cicero’s influence is not what it was. His appeal is that he occupies the centre ground and that, whichever way he leans, the senate leans with him. If he takes an active role in Caesar’s death it will seem that we have bought him, and that will lose him the Senate.”

“Yes,” Decimus spoke up, nodding thoughtfully. “Cicero would be much more useful if he could take up our cause with the pedarii afterwards – we should keep him in the dark for now.”

“Cicero would follow us into Hades after the fact, if he thought that we were on the winning side,” Cassius murmured with a cruel twist of his lips. Casca and the others nodded, smiling, and Brutus was struck by the thought that the group of them, perched there on the edges of their lecti, were vultures anticipating the death of a lion. 

“Cicero is to be kept ignorant of our plans,” he reiterated, carefully, eyes on Cassius to make sure he had been understood. Cassius gave a barely perceptible nod of his head.

At that moment there came the secret knock, tapped out on the wall beside the entrance to the triclinium. The conspirators eyed each other nervously, and Servilia herself strode to open the door. Eleni slipped into the room bearing a letter, which she held out to Brutus.

“A letter from Titus Pomponius Atticus, dominus.”

Servilia made as though to intercept the note, but Brutus was swifter, plucking it from Eleni’s hands with a reproachful frown. Mindful of the silence that had fallen, he unrolled the letter and read quickly.

_My dear Brutus,_

_Allow me the pleasure of your company for this evening’s dinner, and I swear I’ll not see you disappointed. Cicero will join us as, I hope, will a number of our other friends. It will be an imperfect number for a correct and proper dinner party, but the quality of the company will more than make up for its paucity. What a pleasant occasion it will be for us to become reacquainted after my sojourn in Buthrotum. Cicero also permits me to add that it has been far too long since he last saw you, and he awaits your attendance with utmost anticipation!_

_Atticus._

He swallowed around the knowledge that the days of pleasant dinners and idle conversation were now over. The thought of implicating Cicero, or indeed Atticus, in the business of conspiracy, whether by word, deed, or association, was unconscionable. 

“Is the boy waiting?” he asked.

Eleni nodded, and Brutus excused himself, aware that his mother and Cassius exchanged glances behind his back, to compose a note expressing his regret that he would be unable to attend.

*

Later that evening, Cicero and Atticus sat alone in Atticus’ triclinium, eating and drinking far more than was sensible.

“What a sad day it is,” Cicero murmured grimly, “when old men cannot summon company for a party.”

Atticus concurred. It had been many months since a full complement of guests had occupied the couches in his refurbished rooms, and he had hoped his return to Rome would have provided adequate motive for at least a handful of his closest friends to visit. 

“I wonder about Brutus’ absence,” he said. “He’s usually so keen to spend an evening here. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I had considered we unhappy pair to be two of his more preferred companions.”

Cicero sighed and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I fear, in that case, that we may have been usurped in Brutus’ affections.”

“Oh?”

“You must have heard about Cassius’ return from Syria.”

Atticus shrugged. “I’m ashamed to say I’ve been ensconced in my library for rather too long.”

Cicero fixed him with a wry look. “You must be the only man in Rome not aware of it. Antony’s all but spitting blood, and no doubt persuading Caesar to have the fool run through the moment he sets foot in the senate.”

“After all the business with the Pontians, I should think Cassius would do himself more favours by staying safely in the East.”

“That was years ago, and forgotten – nominally, at least – by Caesar. In any case, I’ve no doubt his appearance at Servilia’s is the reason for Brutus’ absence. His influence on Brutus has always been profound. They were close as boys – I don’t think you knew the family then – and always to be found together, before Cassius’ marriage to Servilia’s youngest girl.”

Cicero gave an affected toss of his head as he concluded this little story – the same gesture he made in the senate in an attempt to feign indifference – and drank uncharacteristically deeply from his wine cup. 

Atticus privately worried about his friend’s fondness for Brutus. Since the ignominy of the return from Pharsalus and the induction of Brutus to their social circle, he had often noted the softness around Cicero’s eyes when he smiled at things Brutus had said, and the eagerness to please which crept into Cicero’s voice as he recounted anecdotes for Brutus’ approval. Now he observed his friend’s downturned mouth and hoped Cassius’ stay in Rome would prove to be fleeting.

“Come, now,” he said, clapping his hands. “Enough of this misery. Let us turn to this matter of Vetullius and his treatise on Plato. He can’t mean to publish, can he, except in certain anticipation of being roundly mocked?”

“You know far too well how to distract me, Atticus. I suppose I ought to thank you.”

“Nonsense. It’s as much for my own good as for yours; you’re so terribly boring in the depths of this sort of despondency. Now, the _Platonica_ , I demand an honest opinion.”

*

**a.d. ix Id. Mart. 44**

It was the day of Caesar’s great induction of one hundred new senators, bearded and moustachioed barbarians from Cisalpine Gaul and plebeians from the streets of the Subura. The conspirators, united in their abhorrence of the very idea of raising such men to senatorial rank, stood together in the gallery, observing the proceedings.

“I swear I saw that one selling fish in the forum,” Cimber muttered bitterly as they looked down upon Caesar’s men, entering the Curia for the first time and gazing about with identical, comical expressions of wonder.

“At least he’s Roman,” Cassius pointed out. “A good Roman fishmonger is a fine nobleman compared to some of these Belgians and Celts who call themselves ‘chiefs’.”

“There’s one over there with an earring.”

They fell into sullen silence and watched Caesar enter with the ubiquitous Lucius Vorenus dogging his steps like a loyal pet lion. 

“It’s the end, eh?” 

Cicero joined them in the gallery and leant beside Brutus, close enough that Brutus could feel the warmth of him and caught the scent of silphium and honey that told him Cicero must have recently been suffering from a sore throat. He contained himself and barely glanced to his left, noting with unhappiness Cicero’s pointed indifference to his presence. 

“The Gauls have invaded! But don’t be so glum; they will return to their ghastly mountain hovels soon enough. Caesar will only summon them back when he needs their support for some fresh outrage.”

Brutus had done his best to distance himself from Cicero – if he could not share confidences with him anymore, and it was dangerous to seek out his company, it was best the thing were done properly. It was as his mother had instructed him: he had hardened his heart. And it was also as Cassius wanted it, which rankled, somehow. Having Cicero hovering at the periphery of their group was awkward and unwelcome. Brutus felt guilty enough as it was for having so shamelessly abandoned a friend, and needed no reminder of Cassius’ disdain for what his fellow conspirators perceived as cowardice and what Brutus was increasingly beginning to understand to be Cicero’s good sense and prudence.

“The great man shadowing Caesar is the famous Lucius Vorenus, one assumes,” he said, watching the pair of them make their rounds amongst the old senators, Caesar’s smiles and handshakes doing little to reassure those who felt bewildered by the appearance of so many barbarians in their midst. 

“Indeed.”

“Affectionate, aren’t they,” Cassius said, with a glance at Brutus. “Might be father and son.”

Brutus said nothing. There was no need for such a pointed and deliberately painful observation; his conviction was firm.

“Caesar would have the humble people think so,” Cicero agreed, meanwhile. “He keeps the wretched man by his side constantly.”

“This beast of the field is a senator of Rome!”

“Do not fret so, Casca,” Cicero soothed. “We timid subjects of King Caesar must learn to be tolerant.”

Cassius and Cimber shifted impatiently and Brutus wished fervently that Cicero would take his leave before any imprudent words could be exchanged.

“I believe I shall go home and stupefy myself with wine,” the older man announced, to Brutus' relief. “Good day to you all.”

He glanced at Brutus as he was leaving, a regretful, admonishing look. Brutus stamped down his desire to follow after him and spend the afternoon in pleasant insobriety.

“Old fool,” murmured Cassius, casting another tactless glance in Brutus’ direction. 

Brutus failed to speak up in Cicero’s defence and the taste left by this minor betrayal was bitter; it remained so when he raised his hand in greeting to Caesar, who was looking up at them from the Senate floor and smiling.

*

**Id. Mart. 44**

Cicero woke early, as was usual, and went into the garden to eat a meagre breakfast, just as a pale and sickly sun was rising over the Esquiline. Tiro brought the morning’s letters, which consisted mostly of pleas for assistance in rural property disputes he had no interest in undertaking, and invitations to dinners he had no intention of attending. Tiro then handed him a list of the clients already queuing by the front door. In years past, it had always been Cicero’s policy to receive clients as early in the morning as possible, but of late he had grown tired of their wrangling and their squabbling. It was hard to escape the niggling awareness that their eagerness to receive his patronage only made a mockery of his inexorably dwindling influence. He longed, sometimes, to order them all to be driven into the street and henceforth have a notice pinned to the door: _Marcus Tullius Cicero is no longer at home to hangers-on, for the little good it may have done you._

He decided instead to begin the journey to the Campus Martius a little earlier than usual, so that it could be made at leisure. Cicero had grumbled often that Caesar’s rebuilding of the curia – the Curia Julia, as the people had started to call it – was of no greater inconvenience than when one considered that the walk from his house to the Campus Martius was that bit more ardous than the stroll to the Forum, and today he took up a similar refrain. The matters up for debate in that day’s senate were unlikely to amount to anything particularly interesting, and Cicero did not anticipate having to contribute anything more than a few words of generic approbation, and so had no need to prepare a speech. Despite the distance, the walk through the city was pleasant, the sun warm though weak, and he dictated a brief letter to his brother Quintus, which Tiro took down on wax and would later send with the next dispatch to the farm in Tusculum. 

They arrived at Pompey’s Theatre with little time to spare before the opening of the session. By the time he and Tiro reached the Porticus Pompeia at the entrance to the theatre’s garden, he was happy indeed to hurry towards his seat with only cursory greetings to Casca and Cimber, and the others of his fellow senators gathered outside. 

The curia filled quickly, the general murmur of conversation rising steadily as senators took their places and continued to discuss the business of the day. Cicero had twisted in his seat to invite Sergillus to visit him at home in order to continue an argument about the facility of the right of inheritance between cousins, when he became aware of a sudden spreading hush and a commotion behind him on the Curia floor. 

He looked around and saw with incomprehension that Cimber was tussling with Caesar in the centre of the floor. It was, he assumed, related to the fool’s brother’s continuing exile, and seemed at first to be merely embarrassing – Cicero was on the verge of averting his eyes in disgust when Cimber made a grab for Caesar’s toga and pulled it free, falling back to cry “What are you waiting for? Now! Now!”

Cicero watched, aghast, as Casca sprang forward and Caesar closed his hand around the blade of a short dagger, the kind it was fashionable these days to carry if one was young and rich and foolish. The first blood spilled onto Caesar’s tunic even as the next man, Cassius, stepped forward and slashed at Caesar’s face, followed by another, who plunged the knife into his back. 

As Caesar reeled and fought against his assailants, the rest of the senate rose to its feet, a great susurrating babble of panic swelling to drown out the cries of Caesar’s attackers. Cicero rose with them, struggling to gain a better view of the commotion, mind whirring furiously to think of the right course of action.

As each man took their turn and span away, the pedarii began to scatter. Cicero made a swift search of the downturned faces of the assassins and spotted Brutus standing aghast at the edge of the melee, seemingly struck mute and immobile by the horror of what unfolded before him on the floor. He looked up and by chance met Cicero’s appalled gaze, and in that moment Cicero intended to call out to him, in order to offer him the chance to abandon madness and come away to safety. He would have done so were it not for the wretched, panicked din and the undercurrent, like a heavy burst of hailstones, of six hundred pairs of sandals dashing for the Forum. He looked back as the tide of his fellow senators began to sweep him away, and wished for a deeply painful moment that he had put a stop to all the business with Cassius when it had begun, and had used what little influence he had had over Brutus to dissuade him from such foolishness. But Marcus Tullius Cicero was a creature of habit, and cowardice is the most difficult of all the vices to shake. Bowed by regret, he allowed himself to be swept away by the throng, the last glimpse he had of Brutus being of an anguished figure at the edge of a pack of wolves, and of Cassius, hovering behind him, the grim spectre of Brutus’ unfolding destiny, pressing a knife into Brutus’ open hand. 

Once forced out into the portico Cicero frowned, wrapped his toga around himself more tightly, and instructed Tiro, running beside him, to go and advise Terentia that it would be prudent to leave the city. Divorced they might be, and disgusted with him she almost certainly still was, but she had been a good wife to him for the greater part of his life and to make certain of her safety was really the very least he could do for her now. He thought of her approval when he had first introduced Brutus as a personal friend, so pleased with him for finally making fortuitous connections. His frown deepened on that unhappy thought, and he fled with the rest of the crowd.

*

Much later that afternoon, when a body was brought into the atrium of the house of the Junii, Brutus schooled himself to avert his eyes from the gaping crimson maw of Quintus’ throat. He thought of Antony’s hands, which had clasped his shoulders as Antony brushed a lingering kiss against his cheek, and those same hands’ cruel grip around Cicero’s wrists a year ago in the curia. He looked down at his own trembling fingers and for a moment thought them still red with Caesar’s blood. His mother looked over the body dispassionately and instructed the slaves to remove it from the house and throw it in the river. Cassius cast Brutus a baleful look as though to say: ‘You see, the kind of man you have tied us to?’

Cicero, who had sidled around to bask in the conspirators’ imagined glory, looked pale and thoughtful in the wake of Antony’s threats, and took his leave in a hurry for the Argiletum, to continue packing for his sojourn in the country. Brutus was not at all sorry that Quintus was dead.

*

It was now late in the evening – the crowds which had fled at the news of Caesar’s death had been replaced by a violent mob of veterans and opportunists, trouble-makers all. The city rang with the sound of furious disorder. Cicero had decided to make for the house on the Argiletum because he was sure it was safer than risking the journey to the Palatine along the Via Sacra, which had been occupied by the mob.

He was in the midst of instructing the slaves in packing belongings for the journey to the country, when Tiro alerted him to a sudden thumping on the wooden gate which led from the garden into the alleyway beyond. Anticipating the worst, Tiro had ordered the slaves to arm themselves with torches and whatever could be found in the way of weapons. 

Cicero thought crossly that he would not be cowed into hiding himself away within his own home, and brushed Tiro aside to join Heracles, the heavy-set kitchen slave, as he led the torch-lit procession through the garden. The gate was opened cautiously, to reveal two figures, their faces obscured by the cowls of their cloaks. 

“Show yourselves,” growled Heracles, thrusting the torch closer to the pair. 

The taller of the two cast off his cowl and revealed familiar features, thrown starkly into relief by the shadows cast by Heracles’ torch. 

“Brutus!” Cicero exclaimed. “Are you mad? There is a mob outside, intent on your murder!”

“Forgive me, Cicero. Will you let us in?”

Cicero stood aside and allowed Brutus and his companion, whom Cicero recognised as Brutus’ body slave, into the garden, whereupon Heracles quickly shut and barred the door behind them.

“What did you expect to achieve by coming here?” Cicero demanded, ushering Brutus into the house. “I’m powerless to help you; the senate are hardy likely to listen to sense, much less the people. Lepidus has a legion in the Forum - ”

“I’m not about to make you supplicate yourself to him,” Brutus replied quietly. “And I’m well aware this is trouble of my own making, I don’t intend to rely on you to extricate me.”

“Well then, why _have_ you come?” He tried not to meet Brutus’ eyes, because cowardice had served him well thus far, and he did not want to be tempted into reckless bravery. Brutus, for his part, regarded him silently, before raising his hands to his face and letting out a ragged sigh. 

“Even after Antony’s visit, my mother’s house is still full of the usual party of glad-handers and leeches, all of them mad with wine and the scent of Caesar’s blood. Cassius and my sister are plotting our next move, and my mother seems determined to ensnare herself another lover to replace the one she’s lost... You had the decency to leave immediately after Antony, which at the moment makes you the most desirable company.”

Cicero waited a long moment, then strode to Brutus and embraced him, kissing his cheek firmly in a gesture of sympathy and consolation. Coward he may be, but he hated to recognise in Brutus some familiar measure of failing courage. “It is done now,” he said gently, as though he were speaking to Tullia as a child after she had broken a favourite toy. “For better or for worse, it cannot be undone.”

He called for wine and bread, and led Brutus through the house, into a room which afforded them more privacy, where Brutus could sink gratefully onto a lectus, toga slipping from one shoulder with its embroidered border hanging creased and stained.

“Is there much trouble on the streets, apart from Anthony’s mob?” Cicero asked after a long silence.

“Some,” Brutus replied. “Not as much as I had expected. Though I hadn’t really thought about the city – I mean, the people – I hadn’t thought they might not welcome what we planned to do…”

“Half the city has retreated behind closed doors and shuttered windows, and the other half rampages here and there making petty trouble under the banner of revolution. Thus has it always been with the mob.”

A slave appeared, bearing bread and wine, figs, and a bowl of sweetened dates, Brutus’ particular favourites. Cicero detected Tiro’s hand in this, and silently gave thanks for his omniscient friend. He took a mouthful of wine, barely watered – Tiro again – and motioned for Brutus to do the same. The younger man did so, but with little enthusiasm, and seemed to balk at the sight of his own hands in front of him as he reached for the bread, even shying away from the dates when they were offered. 

Cicero dismissed the slave and settled back against his lectus, finding himself similarly uninterested in the food, but picking at a fig for lack of any other distraction. 

“What are your plans, given Antony’s position?” he asked finally.

Brutus placed his drained cup on the table before he replied. Cicero reached immediately to refill it. “What can we do, but abide by Antony’s terms?” He gave a low laugh. “My mother would see Atia stripped and flogged before the rostra, and the loss of that opportunity seems to trouble her more than anything else.”

Cicero smiled grimly, “Are we all to be bound by Antony’s desires, and consider ourselves fortunate?”

“I’ll not apologise for conducting this business honourably, Cicero.”

Cicero shook his head, dismissing the argument with a wave of his hand. “As I said, what’s done is done. But you must have a clear aim in mind. What do you intend to do, have you given it any further thought?”

Brutus gave an imperceptible shrug. “Give an honest and honourable speech at Caesar’s funeral, make clear our motivations and rely on the good sense of the people to prevail. And you?”

Cicero made a face suggesting he thought good sense might be in fairly short supply. “I am heading to the country, as I said. Retreat seems the wisest course of action, for the moment.”

“Wisdom seems increasingly to be synonymous with cowardice,” Brutus agreed quietly. It was a token of their friendship, he thought, that Cicero did not bristle under perceived criticism. “When will you be leaving?”

“Soon, I hope. It might seem cowardly but I would urge you to consider doing the same. By absenting ourselves from the city for a month or so, we might hope to draw Antony into damning himself by virtue of his own incompetence. The senate will watch him attempt to rule the city as though she were an errant slave, and they’ll soon be desperate to get rid of him.”

Brutus nodded. “I hope you’ll be proved right, but I’m afraid I cannot leave.”

“Ah. And may I ask why?” The question was phrased in a manner Brutus recognised from many prosecutions, when it was clear that Cicero already knew the answer, and only wished the defendant to damn himself by virtue of his own confession.

“Cassius and I have drawn our lots together,” he admitted, the words bitter on his tongue. “To abandon him now - I cannot. Besides, we have the republic to save.” 

This attempt at levity fell rather flat and they sank into contemplative silence as Brutus took a small handful of dates. Cicero watched him eat them, one after the other. He was struck, suddenly, by the realisation that, in the many years that they had been friends, Brutus had never seemed more in need of reassurance. Since the miserable time in Caesar’s camp after the disaster of Pharsalus, Cicero had felt the weight of unspoken responsibility, and gratitude for Brutus’ unarticulated, uncomplicated trust. Now, brought together and held together by the consequences of Caesar’s death, he felt it all the more keenly. Brutus chose another date, and Cicero decided, in honour of a friendship recently in danger of unravelling, to offer him respite from intrigue and deception, for a few hours more at the very least.

“Will you stay longer?” he asked, surprised by his own earnestness. “I guarantee you’ll find no glad-handers here, inebriated or otherwise.”

Brutus looked to be in two minds. He took a swift mouthful of wine and straightened his toga. “I ought to be getting home. My mother will be pouring honey into Cassius’ ear, I’d hate him to give my sister any reason to fly into one of her rages.”

“I’m sure Cassius can look after himself. He has married one Caepio; he’ll have no difficulty fending off another. Come, I’ll have the slaves open a room.”

Brutus hesitated, and for a long moment Cicero thought he might refuse the invitation. His answer seemed incongruously significant, putting Cicero in mind of the portentous dreams by which Caesar’s poor wife Calpurnia was rumoured to lately have been afflicted.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Brutus said, however, settling gratefully back onto the lectus and offering Cicero a weary smile. “Though if anyone should ask, I put up a much better fight before letting myself be persuaded.”

*

**a.d. xiv Kal. Apr.**

It seemed, after all, that Cicero had been right to be sceptical where the good sense of the Roman people was concerned. Antony’s eulogy to Caesar, as melodramatic a piece of stage-acting as Brutus had ever witnessed, had stirred the crowd into a frenzy, and they had chased Brutus and Cassius, along with Decimus and Casca and a number of the other conspirators, from the Forum to their respective houses, snapping at their heels like a baying pack of hunting dogs. The lictors were of little help, offering only token resistance before breaking ranks and running for shelter in the Subura. Brutus imagined Antony had laughed heartily, having climbed down from the rostra still clutching Caesar’s bloodied toga, at the thought of his newest, greatest enemies fleeing for their lives as he himself had done less than a week ago.

In his house on the Palatine, Brutus was uncomfortably drenched in a cold sweat and Cassius sat beside him not much better, arms around himself and staring unseeingly at the floor, white with shock. In other circumstances, Brutus might have felt moved by it and offered some comfort, but now Antony was standing before them, supposedly come in conciliation, leaning against a pillar with a most unconciliatory smile upon his face.  
“Grain monitor?” Brutus repeated, spitting out the words. “Why on Gaia’s earth would I want to be Grain Monitor?”

“It would give you a reason to leave the city with dignity.”

“I have no intention of leaving the city.”

Antony spread his hands like a shopkeeper unable to offer a lower price for a bolt of cloth. “A tour of Asian supply ports would be the most natural thing in the world, nobody could possibly accuse you of running away.”

“I have no intention of leaving the city!”

Antony sighed as though Brutus were an implacable child, and turned to address his mother. “Servilia, my dear, sorry about all this.” He smiled ruefully with false regret. “Got a bit carried away. Excellent speech, incidentally,” he added to Brutus. “A touch too cerebral, perhaps, for that audience, but…”

“Have you been offered any refreshment?” Servilia interrupted icily, somehow turning the very appearance of civility into a threat.

“Some water will be lovely, thank you,” Antony replied. “Please, speak sense to your son; he and his friends must leave the city, I cannot answer for their safety.”

“Do not look so pleased with yourself,” Servilia answered with a smile. “You’re a liar and a breaker of oaths, and you’ve roused a rabble, nothing more. A pantomime actor might have done what you did today.”

Antony was amused by this, in that dark, dangerous way of his. “Lucky it was me that did it then, eh? Else you would now be on your knees sucking pantomime cock.” 

He turned is attentions to Brutus and said, in a tone implying it was exactly what he wished, “I have no wish to abuse or humiliate you. I only wish you gone.”

“We are going nowhere,” said Servilia, with impressive, haughty determination.

“No,” Antony agreed, “not you, at least. The men shall leave. You will stay here in the city with me as my guest.”

Servilia laughed. It was a skill Brutus admired in her to laugh in the face of Antony’s threats. “Hostage, you mean?”

“If you like.”

“You may wish as you will,” said Cassius suddenly, roused from his stupor. “We yet have all the Senate behind us, and all the men of quality!”

Antony lost all his pretence of joviality at that; what little amusement he got from toying with Brutus evaporated in Cassius’ presence, as had always been the way.

“And I have an angry mob that will roast and eat your men of quality in the ashes of the Senate house!”

He flung down his cup, and it bounced and rolled towards the impluvium, the splash as it fell into the water masked by the cry of the door slave as Antony shoved him aside and exited the house. 

Silence hung heavily in the atrium even as Eleni cuffed the serving girl about the head and gestured at her to fetch the discarded cup. Brutus was trembling with something akin to anger, directed only towards himself, for having chosen to follow this disastrous path in the first place.

“It is a rabble, nothing more,” his mother began to repeat in that lofty voice of self-assurance, and Brutus jumped to his feet with the sheer force of his fury.

“It is the people of Rome, mother! Can you not even now admit that Antony has outplayed us?”

“No,” replied Cassius, his eyes bright with desperate fervour, “no, there is the army to control the people, and the Senate - ”

“You heard Antony, he will command the mob to tear apart the Senate if it suits him – and we are not Sulla, or even Caesar, to bring the army to Rome! The army is already _in_ Rome, loyal to Caesar and _now_ loyal to Antony!”

“I will not leave the city to him,” Cassius insisted, but with so little determination it seemed like an admission of defeat. 

“Can you still not see, Cassius?” Brutus was heartily sick of the conversation and strode to the door of the tablinium to begin packing his papers; it would be unwise to entrust the job to a slave, who might in these circumstances think of selling his secrets to Antony. “We no longer have any choice.”

***


	5. Liberators

**Chapter 4  
Liberatores**

_Brutus Cicero S.D._

_I hope my letter finds you well. The weeks since we last spoke seem to have passed in a haze of diplomacy and endless travelling; I wonder how long we shall be forced to stay here, wandering back and forth in the desert in search of legions._  


_If I had thought the journey through Attica depressing, then our travels since then have hardly been more edifying. It barely rains in the East, and the interminable heat and the proliferation of dust and sand are quite oppressive to the spirits. Nostalgia has never affected me before, when I have known that I may return home whenever I please.  
_

_No doubt you have heard that the Athenians have put up statues of us beside those of the Tyrannicides; you can imagine how that pleases Cassius. I confess I find it difficult to consider myself a second Aristogeiton, when even signing my own name has of late caused me some difficulties of conscience._  


_Whatever news you can give us of Rome, I will be glad to receive it. We have any number of friends sending us dispatches, as I’m sure you’re aware, but your judgement is always valuable.  
_

_In hope of hearing from you soon, I beg you to forego your usual particularity in style and composition and simply write to me more quickly!  
_

_Antiochia ad Orontem, Iun. 44._

*

_My dear Brutus,_

_Forgive the brevity of this meagre communication; I am about to begin the journey back to Rome, having spent the time since we last met engaged in a rural legal case. It is because of this latter concern that I have had little time of late to attend to my correspondence. It is convenient, you will say, that I should be called away from Rome and kept away throughout these troubled months and you are right; it has served my purpose to maintain my absence from the city. I have received near-constant reports from the Senate, and from my other friends who have wished to keep me apprised of the situation, and it is apparent that Antony is living up to all our expectations. I feel able to tell you that your own departure was regrettable, but perhaps not entirely unwise._  


_In my more desolate moments I have often wished to be able to return to the peaceful days we spent as guests of Atticus, in friendly disagreement over Plato, Epicurus, and your estimable Stoics. I even put out in a ship for Greece, to meet with you at Athens, but the winds were unfavourable and we were beaten back to port. Since then I have found my resolve and am determined to return to Rome. Your company, your counsel, or even some further scribbled words would be a great comfort to me as I journey south, but alas Tiro and I must content ourselves with reading the news of Antony’s latest outrages and consider out next moves with care.  
_

_With that in mind, it occurs to me that once I return to Rome, it may be unwise to continue our correspondence as often as I should prefer. I confess I am succumbing to paranoia, and that I am beginning, in my wilder moments, to suspect every messenger in my employ of carrying my letters to the Caesarians. I shall, however, be at Velia for some weeks in the meantime, and it might be to both our advantages if you were to visit me there to discuss our plans. It ought not to require explicit reiteration, but I have not seen you since you called on me on the evening of the Ides of March, and I would value your company not just as a confederate, but also as a friend.  
_

_Tusculum, Quint. 44._

*

**a.d. ii Non. Sext. 44**

Brutus had ridden away from Rome without once looking back, irritated by Cassius’ continual twisting around in the saddle to cast a final glance on the Capitoline Hill and gaze with heavy longing at the Servian Wall as it disappeared into the distance with every new mile they travelled along the Via Flaminia. He supposed, though, that leaving the city went easier with him than with Cassius because Cassius had already known the pain of exile, and went towards it a second time with a far heavier heart.

They went first to Crete, to Kommos to stay with Creticus and discuss plans. Brutus had no intention of taking the post of Grain Monitor and ignored Antony’s only missive ordering him to do so – it was clear it was a token gesture merely to enable Antony to condemn him for outright insubordination. Then, in the beginning of the summer they sailed for Greece, rode through Attica to the Euboean coast, and went from there to the east, where Brutus had felt his absence from Italy like a palpable wound.

“Cicero will be at Velia next month,” he reported when Cassius enquired as to the latest letter’s contents. “He asks if I will meet him, to discuss our strategy.”

Cassius snorted, “‘ _Our_ ’ strategy, is it, now he sees fit to return from his sojourn in the country?”

“There was a legal case – he took it as a favour to a family friend.”

Cassius remained unimpressed. “You’ve explained his reasoning to me a thousand times; it doesn’t change the fact of the man’s cowardice.”

“We are run-aways too, remember,” Brutus argued, though he knew it was not the case that they could return voluntarily, with Anthony unopposed by the Senate. “This exile of ours is self-imposed.”

Cassius frowned, and remained uncharacteristically silent. He resented any attempt to make comparisons between himself and Cicero, as he saw himself as a creature of entirely different nature and motivations; Brutus was loath to disenchant him because he did not like to provoke an argument. Sometimes, however, Cassius made it very difficult for him to keep his tongue. 

“I will sail for Italy in three weeks’ time,” he said, hoping in vain that Cassius would not try further to dissuade him.

“There is no need for you to go to Italy, when Cicero could just as easily declare for us and come to Greece.”

“And what good would that do?”

“With the Senate’s explicit support, we would be in a position to crush Antony - ”

“If Cicero came to Greece, he would come alone, without the Senate and without any legions.”

“I am well aware of that,” Cassius sighed.

“Then I’ll meet with Cicero, and we can discuss the best course of action.”

“Very well, yes – but consider: by going to Italy you’ll be putting yourself in danger.”

Brutus considered this, and nodded; it was true, if his ship were to be intercepted, he might very well find his head on a spike in the forum before the month was out. “Isn’t it worth the risk?”

“To consult with Cicero? Dis only knows why! Knowing what we know of Cicero’s character, do you not think it might be prudent to at least consider his motivations?”

Brutus was surprised by the question. It had not occurred to him to consider the possibility of Cicero having secretly given his allegiance to the Caesarians; his personal dislike of Antony alone was enough to make the notion ridiculous. 

“Cicero has never been any friend of yours, Cassius, but he is mine. If you’d known him as well as I have, you’d have no reason to doubt his sincerity.”

“To Hades with friendship where Antony is concerned – I’d not risk your life by asking you to make the journey, and I can’t believe that Cicero would, if he’s such a friend as you imagine.”

“I’m bound to you now, Cassius,” Brutus reminded him gently, “for better or for worse, but you can’t pretend that anything we’ve done has been to the benefit of my wellbeing.”

It was a long moment before Cassius smiled at him, fond and wistful. “You’re right. We’re bound by our actions, though _I_ cannot regret them. I can’t think of anyone with whom I’d rather share my exile.” 

“Stop it, Cassius, I’m immune to your flattery by now.”

“I know, I know,” Cassius said, throwing up his hands in resignation. “You’ll go to Velia, and I will simply have to dislike it intensely and wait for your return.”

He laid his hand briefly on Brutus’ shoulder before leaving him to his letter writing, a small gesture of truce to reassure Brutus that all was still well between them, at least for the moment.

*

The journey to Velia was long but thankfully blessed by good weather, and so within five days of departure Brutus found himself on deck while the ship docked at the town’s small harbour. Vennius, the centurion Cassius had detailed, along with ten of his men, to form a personal guard, stood at Brutus’ side and scanned the approaching quayside. He had been a welcome companion to Brutus over the course of the voyage, having quite an astonishing knowledge of natural history and thus being able to name all the seabirds and varieties of fish they had encountered along the way, even regaling his commander with tales of his childhood in the hills of Latium and speaking with great affection of the proud little city of Velia, which was nestled on the Tyrrhenian coast some two hundred miles from Rome.

“It might be best, sir,” Vennius said as they neared the shore, “if we were to sail again on the evening tide.”

Brutus nodded, despite regretting the impossibility of spending a night as Cicero’s guest. “Yes, of course. Cassius would be very pleased with such prudence.”

Vennius smiled. “My men and I will accompany you to the house, if that seems... prudent.”

“I’m making no attempt to be inconspicuous, so it won’t matter if we cause a stir,” Brutus agreed. “You've spoken enough of the Velian people for me to willingly place my trust in them.”

“They love the republic, sir, as my family do.”

“And you say they had no love of Caesar.”

Vennius nodded thoughtfully. “Velia’s no town of veterans. They’ve no loyalty to generals or legions – the republic gave them their citizenship, so that’s what they stand by. They’re steadfast people, sir. Trustworthy.”

The ship docked easily and Brutus and Vennius’s men disembarked while the crew rushed to secure the ship at the moorings. On the wharf stood Tiro, smiling and looking tired but otherwise in good health. He hurried to greet them.

“You’ve brought half a legion with you,” he joked, eyeing Vennius and his men. “Cicero will be pleased.”

Brutus smiled. He had always liked Tiro – it was no secret, at least among Cicero’s closest friends, that he and his former slave had once been intimate, but it was impossible to feel bitterness or resentment towards such a genial and efficient master of all of Cicero’s affairs. He took Tiro’s arm and grasped it, grateful to see him again.

“Some notion of Cassius’ that I would need protection,” he said, with a glance at Vennius. “From the looks of it, though, the stories about Velian unruliness seem to be insubstantiated.”

The harbour was deserted, apart from three toothless fishermen mending their nets in the shade of a shrine to the Venti, the five Winds. Vennius coughed to mask a smile at Tiro’s obvious confusion, and Brutus was amused to catch his eye as they were led away from the wharf and into the town.

“I’d better take you to him directly,” Tiro said to Brutus as they passed under the monumental sandstone gateway built centuries before by the Greeks, which still served as the main entrance to the town. “He’s been pacing the floor since dawn for news of your arrival.”

Brutus felt pleasant anticipation curl in the pit of his stomach, and quickened his pace. 

The legionaries drew something of a crowd on their way through the streets towards the larger houses at the edge of the town, though the majority of the townspeople seemed unaware of Brutus’ identity. When they reached the marketplace, however, one man’s voice lifted above the hubbub to cry ‘Glorious liberator!’ at which point Tiro began to hurry for fear they be overcome by the sudden throng of well-wishers. 

“You weren’t wrong about your Velians’ sympathies, Vennius,” Brutus commented once they reached the courtyard of the house in which Cicero was currently taking residence. 

“No, sir,” Vennius replied, smiling proudly. “Shall my men and I remain outside?”

“I don’t think there’s any need for that. A guard at the door, perhaps, in case word reaches Cassius that I’m becoming careless.”

“Very good, sir.”

Tiro led the way into the atrium and while Brutus’s eyes adjusted to ducking out of the midday sunlight he saw that Tiro had been entirely truthful in describing Cicero’s agitation. He paused, mid-way through striding from one side of the room to the other, and broke into a wide, relieved smile. Brutus felt his heart lift with a bewildering swell of familiarity and affection.

“My dear, dear Brutus,” Cicero said, hurrying to embrace him. He took Brutus’ hands between his own and kissed them.

“Cicero, it’s a relief to see you.”

“I have missed you a great deal,” Cicero murmured, patting him fondly on the arm and stepping back to take in the sight of him in his entirety. 

“We both know you’ve been too busy for that.”

“Indeed, I certainly have been busy. There was a time I’d have enjoyed a return to the crucible of power, but these days I fear it’s a case of necessity rather than pleasure. Come: I have had a meal prepared.”

Cicero led the way into the triclinium, where there lay already the beginnings of a modest afternoon spread. Brutus gratefully took one of the couches and allowed a slave to remove his cloak and vambraces. 

“I couldn’t sympathise more,” he confessed. “I’d often thought about returning to the east, but now there’s no prospect of going home I’m beginning to find it very dull indeed.”

More food was brought, and wine, though Brutus wished to keep a clear head and so accepted only a little, very well-watered. 

“Tiro will take notes,” Cicero said, once they had eaten a little and exchanged pleasantries. “Unless you’ve anything exceptionally dangerous to tell me, in which case it shall have to be committed to memory, rather than papyrus.”

“Of course.”

“First you must tell me of your progress in the east - we hear enough about Dolabella’s antics to make me heartily sorry of ever having placed any trust in him.”

Brutus shrugged. “Cassius has always detested Dolabella; I think he’s grateful of the opportunity to antagonise him.”

Cicero nodded. “What news from Greece? I’m grateful for all your correspondence, but I’ve been longing to question you about your travels myself. Will you return to Athens once matters have been better settled?”

“Cassius has looked to his prospects in Syria – now we intend to make for Smyrna, and then back towards Lycia.”

Tiro took note of these plans assiduously. It occurred to Brutus that Cassius would have balked at allowing Cicero’s man to document their movements, but it was usual for Tiro to sit in on even the most sensitive of meetings in Cicero’s house, and Cicero guarded his private papers with such ferocity that Brutus was sure even Ulysses would have been hard-pressed to steal them from him. 

“And then?” Cicero prompted.

“And then, Cassius tells me, we’ll have raised legions enough to march on Italy.”

“And on to Rome?”

Brutus hesitated. “No. I won’t bring an army to Rome, Cicero.”

Cicero nodded. “I’m glad to hear you say so. By that point, in any case, you may find there is no longer any Rome left to which to return: the senate are in disarray, and Caesar’s boy and Antony will no doubt soon be at each other’s throats.”

“Surely that can only work to our advantage.”

“ _Your_ advantage is not quite yet the same thing as the advantage of Rome, I think. Esteemed senators are scrabbling like dogs for scraps and allowing themselves to be cowed into compliance by Antony and his band of malcontents.”

“I’m sorry to have left you in such a situation,” Brutus said, looking glum.

“It’s no matter to me; I flatter myself that my attempts to bring some semblance of control to the senate won’t be entirely in vain. In the meantime, I’m afraid you and Cassius must look entirely to the east for your legions, after all – Antony is Dictator in all but name, and he would never allow a quorum to vote you legions from the senate. If it _were_ ever raised, he would have the proponent murdered and employ someone to talk the matter to death. I have written up a report of the situation, which you might wish to convey to Cassius.”

Brutus nodded. It was nothing he had not expected, and Cassius’ warnings about this being a wasted trip began to seem depressingly prescient.

“If I might change the subject, Cicero, I’d appreciate any news of my mother and my sisters – I’ve had a few letters from Portia, but they’re made terribly bland by her fear of their interception by Antony’s men.”

“All letters leaving Rome lately have been notably pre-occupied with the weather and the state of dear old cousins’ health,” Cicero agreed, with a wry twist of his lips. “You may go, if you wish, Tiro – I fear this news will be far too trivial to be of any worth noting down.”

Tiro nodded and took his leave, bidding farewell to Brutus and wishing him good fortune for his return journey to the east.

“Well,” Cicero said when he had gone, “I suppose you know all about your mother’s refusal to submit to Antony’s intimidation.”

“I had guessed at it.”

“She strides about the city as though she herself were its master, even though the world knows she is still Antony’s prisoner. Even the plebs have begun to have some sympathy for her. She feels your absence keenly.”

“It’s not the first time she’s done without me through exile.”

“Yes, but after Pharsalus she’d no particular wish to have you back.” Cicero caught the look on Brutus’ face and relented, patting him gently on the hand. “Forgive me, it was cruel to bring up the past – I merely wish I did not have to impress upon you how bleak I believe the situation might become. You must have heard that your houses at Caere and Tarentum have been sacked.”

“I know, I know. Cassius nearly refused to let me sail when I proposed meeting you here.”

Cicero smiled. “Then I’m glad you defied him.”

“So am I; it makes me happier than I can say to spend even a few short hours with you, Cicero. Well worth the journey.”

Cicero tried in vain to hide his pleasure at Brutus’ words. Flattery had always been his greatest weakness.

Brutus cleared his throat. “Actually, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve a small favour to ask you.”

Cicero raised an eyebrow, amused; susceptibility to flattery had often landed him with obligations he found it hard to fulfil.

“You needn’t worry – it’s nothing arduous. I’ve simply brought you something to safeguard; my private papers, letters and verses and so forth. I took it all with me to Crete, and then to Greece, but in case the worst should happen, I would hate to see any of it fall into our enemies’ hands. The thought of Antony’s agents pawing at my adolescent poetry is enough to make me hot with embarrassment. Not to mention a number of sensitive documents I’ve received from friends over recent years. As a matter of fact, there are more than a few letters from you in there, Cicero, and I feel it only fair that you should take custody of them, lest they be used to implicate you in any of this business.”

Cicero appeared to consider the matter for a moment, but then nodded and let his hand rest fleetingly once again atop Brutus’ in reassurance. “Of course. I’ll have Tiro squirrel your papers away amongst my own; his administrative system is incomprehensible, I don’t believe I could steal secrets from myself, if I were so inclined.”

“Vennius’ men have brought the box from the ship – I’ll have him entrust it to Tiro before we leave. Thank you, Cicero.”

“Think nothing of it.”

Cicero called for more wine, and it was brought by a slave with a great deal more alacrity than Brutus had come to expect from Cicero’s slaves at home in Rome. Conversation lay at an easy lull for a few good moments while Cicero studied his wine cup and appeared to be silently mulling over something of great importance. Eventually, he cleared his throat and took a swift sip of wine before placing the cup rather heavily on the table before him.

“I wonder, Brutus, if in the spirit of our conversation I might be allowed to entrust you with something of mine – a secret I must share before we’re parted again.”

“It seems a fitting time for confessions, I suppose.” 

“I speak, of course, as a man, and not as a politician, a difference I hope you, of all people, will appreciate.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then, I must confess – I feel compelled to admit – that I have not always thought of you, my dear Brutus, exactly as a friend should.”

Brutus raised an eyebrow. He had always been aware of the fondness with which Cicero regarded him, and had admired Cicero for so long that it would be impossible to deny that the attraction was mutual. For so many years of Brutus' youth, Cicero had been to him the personification of the republic; if Brutus had fallen in love with the republic, as his friends had often taunted, then it was just as true that he had fallen in love with Cicero too, at least in some small part. He had been a boy of eighteen, newly returned from his schooling in Greece, when he followed his uncle to the forum and watched Cicero ascend the rostra to accept his consulship; he had seen vitality and purpose, embodied in the person and words of this one man, and he had shivered with envy and desire. 

After Pharsalus, when Cicero began sending him lengthy discourses on rhetoric and Platonism and Atticus first invited him to dinner, he had already been indulging a secret habit of appreciating Cicero’s form, the deft movement of his hands and the melodious cadence of his tone, when he stood in the senate to speak. Since then he had come to know Cicero deeply, to understand him as a man, and had concluded that he had a good deal more nobility about him than Cicero the politician, who was exasperating in his eagerness to sail with the prevailing wind. As a friend, Cicero had always been unfailingly honest, and unfailingly kind. 

It was out of kindness that Brutus tried to quell the tumble of Cicero's words; he could not bear to see him so uncertain, and so ashamed. “Cicero, there’s no need for this now -”

Cicero held up a hand to quell Brutus’ protests. “No, no, no. Let me finish, for fear I may not have another opportunity: I have not always thought of you entirely as a friend, not because of any lack of feeling, but rather because of an excess of it, and because of my longstanding admiration for you.”

“You know I’ve always understood your respect for me to be entirely undeserved.”

“I am unaccustomed – that is, I have many friends, countless acquaintances, and a good number of hangers-on and relations. Of all of them, it is your opinion I invariably seek first, on matters of philosophy, on my literary exploits; it is – it is, to be frank, extremely tiresome.”

Brutus set down his wine cup, his frown rising into an expression of fond exasperation. “Ah, I see. You’re attempting flattery.”

“The wine has robbed me of something of my customary eloquence,” Cicero admitted ruefully. It did not suit him to stumble for words. “I mean to tell you, you understand, that you have been to me, since we shared those months in Greece with Pompey, dearer to me than any friend.”

“You are dear to me, too, Cicero – believe me. But, can this sudden outpouring of sentiment really do us any good, now, of all times?”

“What other time is there?” Cicero sighed. He cast around with his eyes, as though looking for some object or prop to aid his confession. “Venus will have to forgive me for such an adolescent declaration, I’m afraid. I am shamefully devoted to you, in every private and personal sense.” 

He sighed heavily and bowed his head, fingers tracing the silver satyrs dancing around the rim of the cup. “You can’t have been ignorant of it all these years. I doubt anyone’s good opinion would matter to me quite so much as yours, so you may as well continue to forgive my indiscretion and let me live my life as though I were mercifully unafflicted. I would be eternally grateful if you would refrain from mentioning this... lack of prudence of mine to anyone, other than Tiro, of course, if you must. I’d much prefer that posterity not record me as a… a…”

“Cicero,” Brutus said, alarmed by the bitter self-deprecation behind Cicero’s words. “Why should you give two figs for posterity?”

“History has made your ancestor a hero, as it will you,” Cicero said, frowning. “I doubt it will be so kind to me.”

For a long moment, Brutus was silent, and Cicero’s head remained bowed. He very nearly recoiled when Brutus laid a careful hand upon his shoulder and spoke to him kindly, in a tone of quiet, careful regret. 

“Why have we never spoken about this before? You’ve no need to worry about my good opinion; it is yours, as you’ve always known it has been.”

“I am _not_ a lover of men by preference, any more than you are currently at the mercy of Antony’s whims through choice. I can think of no excuse for all this, except that I am suddenly feeling dissatisfied with a policy of prudence and good judgement. There is a certain immediacy to this situation in which we now find ourselves.”

Brutus laughed. “Do you think Antony would be amused to realise he’s the cause of your sudden declaration?” 

Cicero looked up sharply, but found that Brutus was only attempting to tease him, a smile playing over his long face. Brutus reached out a hand to still his movement as he turned away. “I didn’t mean to mock you. Come on, Cicero; don’t let’s spoil a perfectly pleasant day with all this talk of miseries and confessions. Let us part as friends.”

“Yes,” Cicero replied with difficulty. “You are quite right. That is what we are and must remain.” 

Brutus held Cicero’s hand in his, marvelling at the warmth of Cicero’s skin, the rapidity of the pulse beneath his fingertips. Cicero’s thumb twitched against his wrist and caressed the skin there with the briefest of touches. 

“There are worse things,” Cicero began, in a tone of utmost shame, and then hesitated. He licked at the corner of his lips before pressing on. “There might be a thousand crimes greater than accepting companionship where it is offered. I regret with damning regularity having refused you so rashly when you offered me the same.”

There were two high spots of red on Cicero’s cheeks, and Brutus realised his own breath was hot and heavy, deafening to his own ears in the sudden silence of the triclinium. A small part of him felt inexplicably saddened but unsurprised that it was Cicero and not Cassius who had reached out and touched the solitude that had been grinding away at the pit of his soul those past few months. He raised his hand to curl around the back of Cicero’s neck, his thumb falling into the hollow above the collarbone, where it lay prone until he laid the pad there and stroked the delicate point of the pulse. Cicero’s eyes widened and he made a ragged sound, as though all the air had left his lungs at once. 

“I cannot -” he began, his voice tight and low, but Brutus stopped his mouth with his own. 

“Cicero,” he murmured, the words warm between their lips, “I’d be glad if we were to be lovers, but I’d prefer it to be an act of honesty, not one of desperation.” He felt warm skin and the thud of a racing pulse beneath his fingers. "When this exile is over - " 

“You’re in danger of dishonouring us both with promises we might not be able to keep,” Cicero said hoarsely. “These days so much that ought to go unsaid does not; perhaps this ought to be the exception to that rule.” 

At that moment Tiro appeared at the door to the cubiculum. As though released from an enchantment Brutus became composed once more, his hand removed and replaced at his side, the distance between them unremarkable.

“I’m sorry,” Tiro said, glancing at Cicero apologetically. “Vennius sends word the ship is ready to sail. He is anxious not to miss the slackwater tide.”

Brutus nodded. “Tell him to expect me.”

Duly dismissed, Tiro retreated to the atrium and instructed the slave to fetch Brutus’ cloak.

Cicero nodded absently, as though acknowledging that whatever opportunity had briefly presented itself, it was now past. 

“I believe that’s what our old friend Gallus might have called a timely reprieve,” he said with a smile.

“I’ll say goodbye, then, Cicero.” 

Cicero extended his arm for Brutus to grasp in a firm handshake. “Good health and the gods go with you.”

Brutus hesitated, then nodded, and turned to pick up the missive to Cassius on his way out of the door. Cicero watched him go with the same dreadful sense of destiny he had suffered on the night of the Ides of March, reminded again of Calpurnia and her inauspicious dreams. His misery was only momentarily abated when Brutus turned in the doorway, a small smile curling at the corners of his mouth. 

“When I return, I wonder if I might accept that long-ago invitation to visit your farm?” 

“Of course,” Cicero replied. “Rome will look forward to your return, and so will I.”

Brutus lingered only for a second and then turned on his heel and departed. Cicero watched him go, before calling for Tiro and requesting him to bring the box left by Vennius’ men to the tablinium. When it was brought, he took his customary seat at the table and opened the lid, revealing the chest to be crammed with papyrus, all of it covered with lines of Brutus’ familiar scrawl. 

He pulled out one scrap, followed by another, then scroll after ragged scroll, and read all of them, every word. After he had finished he took the box and its contents and carefully and grimly fed each piece of papyrus into the kitchen fire.

***

**Non. Sept. 44**

Weeks passed, and Cicero tried in vain to put thoughts of Brutus out of his mind in favour of returning to Rome. Atticus was in residence on the Quirinal, though convinced of the prudence of returning to Buthrotum as soon as it could be arranged. He tried to persuade Cicero that it would do him good too to leave the city, playing in turns upon Cicero’s pessimism and his pride by imploring him to retire from politics with some vestige of his former glory still intact. Cicero was aware that to remove himself from Italy then would have meant there could be no prospect of return. Ugly memories of his previous time in exile prevented him from agreeing either to go with Atticus to Buthrotum or to follow Brutus and Cassius to the east.

News of Antony and Octavian’s disagreement and the boy’s departure from the city spread nearly as quickly as the newsreader’s announcement of Octavian’s intention to honour Caesar’s promise of denarii to the people, and Cicero heard it gladly, not least because leading the Senate would prove so much the easier with Antony a wounded bear, blundering about and making enemies of his own accord. 

Servilia sent a dinner invitation almost immediately. Antony, of course, knew that Cicero visited her, and allowed it, which in some ways made him more nervous than if it had been prevented, for Antony did nothing without some malevolent sort of purpose. For now, though, it made sense to remain on friendly terms with Servilia, so Cicero cast off his doubts and duly replied that he would be delighted to attend. Nevertheless, when he and Tiro left the house on the Argiletum, they kept their faces concealed beneath heavy cowls, and hurried the whole way in fear of being watched.

“Have you heard the good news?” Servilia demanded upon their arrival. 

She had cast off the sombre, downcast aspect of recent weeks and seemed like a girl again, animated and beautiful once more. She clutched Cicero’s arm and took him further into the house, pressing close, solicitous.

“I have,” he replied.

“This is the beginning of the end for them!”

Cicero nodded and smiled cautiously. “From your lips to the ears of the Gods.”

“A fool like Antony was sure to blunder. They’ll fight among themselves and they’ll destroy each other.”

“I doubt the boy will be more than a nuisance to Antony; he cannot hope to rival him.”

“Caesar did not choose the boy on a whim. He’ll surprise you, I think.”

“We can hope.”

Servilia took Cicero’s hands between her own. “The senate should ask my son to return – the time is ripe.”

“Brutus,” Cicero said, and paused to consider it. 

Privately, he quivered to hear it suggested, remembering heated words and things almost promised in the triclinium at Velia, but with the better part of common sense he knew that such promises were foolish at times like these. It would be unwise in the extreme to invite Brutus and Cassius and whatever they had collected of the eastern legions to return to the gates of Rome. He had lived through two civil wars already, and had no desire to ignite a third just yet, inevitable though it may eventually turn out to be. “Return? No, not yet. Not quite yet, I think.”

“When?”

“We must wait and see how things develop.”

“Wait and see?” Servilia’s smile became a cold and cynical thing, her face no longer beautiful. “A noble strategy.”

“Not noble, perhaps, but sensible. In any case, tell your son that I - ” Cicero paused and closed his eyes, loath to betray himself too readily. “No, not I – his friends in Rome look forward to seeing him again at some point in the near future.”

Servilia regarded him with new understanding. “I will tell him.”

They sat down to a most subdued dinner.

_***_

**a.d. v Kal. Oct. 44**

Brutus and Cassius had travelled far and wide throughout the eastern Provinces by the time the summer turned balmy and began to drift into autumn. Cities along the Ionian coast submitted one by one, with few exceptions. On reaching Lycia, where the coast turned at a right angle towards the Syrian east, they sent word ahead to the Lycian capital to receive them within the week. 

The city of Patara lay in the verdant cradle of a fertile valley between the Anatolian mountains, bordered on three sides by vertiginous slopes and on the fourth by the sea. A wide, flat beach stretched the length of the bay, providing sweeping views of the sparkling horizon, the sand shelving gently away and allowing only small boats to land their cargoes. For this reason, the nearby harbour was used as the city’s port, allowing for the disembarkation of passengers and the unloading of goods. Cassius had in mind, however, to make an impressive arrival at the city, and so instructed their fleet to moor in the bay, employing a small flotilla of barges to ferry he and Brutus, along with their personal guard, to the beach. 

They were met by a delegation from the city’s governing council, headed by the man elected as its leader. The Lyciarch was an imposing figure of a man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a mane of dark, curling hair and a handsome, weathered face. He took Cassius’ arm in a firm handshake.

“Patara welcomes you as liberators of Rome,” he said, in heavily accented Greek. “As Lyciarch, I offer you friendship on behalf of the cities of the Lycian League.”

“We are glad indeed to accept it,” Cassius replied, grasping his arm in greeting. “Our reputation, as always, precedes us. Gaius Cassius Longinus, Pro-consul of Rome, Governor of Syria; and Marcus Junius Brutus, Praetor of Rome.”

“Proitos of Xanthos,” the Lyciarch introduced himself, with a dry glance in Brutus’ direction. “You have recently sacked the city of my birth for refusing to capitulate to your demands for their allegiance. I regret that word of the League’s desire to make allies of you had not reached them in time.”

“We are gratified to be received by you so graciously, given the circumstances,” Cassius conceded, with a subtle bow.

Proitos smiled, and Brutus was struck by the easy confidence in his manner and the sense that he was somehow mocking them. He shifted under the man's gaze, and received a flash of teeth in return. 

“The cities of Lycia have ever been keen proponents of democracy. Come, let me escort you into the city; I trust it will be acceptable to you to take residence at my home for the duration of your stay?”

Cassius gave his assent and the party made their way up the beach. Brutus was already beginning to regret Cassius’ notion of a grand and impressive entrance, if for nothing more than the discomfort of sand chafing between the thongs of his damp sandals. Litters were offered for the short journey to the city gate, and although Brutus understood the sense in refusing such a display in favour of entering this proud city on foot, he sorely regretted it. As they passed through the city’s monumental gateway, crowds thronged and craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the famous Tyrannicides. Brutus set his mouth in a hard, thin line and wished even more fervently for the luxury of the litter, so that he might pull the curtains tightly closed. 

Patara was known best in Rome for its agricultural productivity, and Brutus had on previous visits been taken to view vast groves of olives, fields of spelt wheat, and row upon row of pomegranate trees heavy with fruit. In the town there was a smell in the air of spices, fish and effluent, the familiar odour of any coastal city. It overpowered the delicate scent of the nearby countryside and put Brutus in mind of the great, heaving harbours of the Piraeus at Athens, where sailors of every race drank and gambled and swore, and humanity had never seemed so far removed from the great achievements of the Athenians in the time of Plato.

Tavernas and workshops ceased their activity to watch the procession wend its way past, and soon the column of soldiers had its own advance guard of children, who laughed and play-acted soldiery, announcing their arrival with whoops and shrieks of laughter. Brutus took note that the majority of buildings on either side of the wide streets were of Hellenistic design, and remembered his history and the story of the capitulation of Lycia to Alexander three centuries earlier. He wondered whether Alexander’s men had also been heralded into the city as heroes, with he and Hephaestion garlanded and paraded side-by-side through the streets. 

Brutus found it impossible to summon enthusiasm for the hours of meetings and diplomacy which lay ahead, though courtesy demanded that he and Cassius present themselves together at the Bouleuterion, to face the emissaries of the cities of the Lycian League. The meeting, thankfully, was swift; Cassius intended to discuss troop numbers and his beloved supply lines with members of the council the following day and saw no reason to prolong the preliminary negotiations. Instead, he and Brutus were led once again through the streets to the city’s theatre, where they were promised a play written in their honour by Lycia’s most celebrated dramatist. Brutus had never heard of the man, but when he murmured as much to Cassius as they climbed the theatre’s steep steps, Cassius pretended not to have heard him.

“We have arranged an evening’s entertainment in honour of our distinguished guests,” announced Proitos to the Lycians, extending his hand towards the two of them in a gesture of benevolent hospitality. “The city of Patara wishes to honour its patrons.”

Cassius nodded gracefully and Brutus looked on with resignation, unable to think of any manner in which he would less like to spend the evening. 

The city’s theatre was modest, for it seated greater numbers than theatres to be found in most provincial towns in southern Italy, but far fewer than Pompey’s great theatre in Rome. It had been constructed in the Greek tradition and the view of the countryside from the auditorium was uninterrupted, as at Epidavros, which Brutus had visited as a boy, and as yet no skene had been constructed behind the orchestra. A solitary line of olive trees hid the rest of the city from view to pleasant effect. 

Brutus and Cassius had been settled at the centre of the top row of the first tier of seats, in the middle of a small group of Lycian dignitaries. Six thousand of the city’s inhabitants had filled the theatre to capacity and greeted their arrival with a great racket of cheering and applause. Now, as the prologue of the play unfolded before them on the stage and the chorus took up places in the orchestra, people in the lower rows craned their necks to catch a glimpse of Brutus and Cassius, seated far above them and obscured from view by a row of Lycian guards.

The play itself was familiar in theme, the same story having been recited or performed at nearly every city on their tour of the Greek east. It was the story of the deliverance of Athens from tyranny in the days before its democratic reforms. The story was as familiar to most Romans as that of Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf, and anyone who had spent time in Athens had seen the great statues of the Tyrannicides set up in the Agora as a symbol of the city’s reverence for democracy; for this occasion the story had been expunged of its usual themes of pederasty and homoerotic jealousy, and instead made the dishonouring of Harmodius’ virgin sister the catalyst for the dramatic events. 

The prologue was set at the funeral oration of Pisistratus, Athens’ benevolent tyrant, and detailed his many great acts, from the beginning of the construction of the great temple to Zeus Olympieios to the tapping of the Nine Springs, and recalled his namesake who accompanied Telemachus on the search for his father in the _Odyssey_. Next, the malevolent Hippias and Hyparchus, Pisistratus’ ill-favoured sons, made their appearance and declared themselves kings; they were dressed in purple togas with wreaths of laurel on their heads and may as well have worn placards bearing Caesar’s name. The first act culminated in the Kings’ contrivance to invite Harmodius’ sister to lead the sacred Panathenaic procession before refuting her virginity and driving her to suicide. 

By this point the audience below were howling and whistling in their hatred for the tyrants. When Harmodius and Aristogeiton – the heroes – made their appearances, they were dressed in an approximation of the _toga virilis_ and carried themselves with such an exaggerated air of wounded dignity that Brutus snorted with laughter, only to earn himself a glare from Cassius and a pointed glance at his much-refilled wine cup. The heroes debated the indignity of Hippias’ tyranny and his treatment of Harmodius’ virtuous sister, and fixed upon the plan to commit his murder, which honour and the gods demanded. 

Filled with a sudden, rising sense of distaste, Brutus cast about distractedly for any sign of the boy bearing the wine, and alighted on a tall, slim figure standing in the shadow of the honour guard. He raised his cup and beckoned and the boy came nearer, cradling a krater of wine in long, slim hands. It was his eyes which drew Brutus’ attention; they were the shape of almonds and painted in dark kohl, framed by long lashes which swept down in a false display of modesty as he approached and bowed. He leaned closer to fill Brutus’ cup and Brutus smelled olibanum and heavily perfumed beeswax upon the boy’s skin, which was bronzed and far darker than that of the native Lycians, and swelled ripely over the curve of the boy’s arse. The boy had softly bowed full lips, which parted to display a flash of his tongue as he wetted them, and he glanced up at Brutus coyly from beneath the dark sweep of his lashes. 

“My boy from Parthia,” Proitos, seated on Brutus’ left, leaned over to murmur. Brutus glanced at him, surprised, and found that Proitos was regarding him with amusement. “He’s a eunuch. I brought him from Pacorus’ court on my visit to Ecbatana, and he tells me his people are descended from the great Xerxes; it amused me to conquer him. I find he is pleasant company, and he takes as much pride as I do in offering our guests _every_ hospitality.”

The boy finished pouring and shot Brutus another low, sweeping glance before returning to his place beside the guards. There was no way of telling how old he was, from his slim hips and the dark hair cropped short above his pierced ears. Brutus shifted on his cushion and turned his attention back to the performance. 

On the stage the conspirators stood concealed while Hippias taunted the Chorus with his disregard for the gods, mocking Harmodius’ sister’s shame at her slandered honour. As his speech reached its climax, the conspirators leapt into view and raised daggers to the heavens, crying out in unison that their actions would bring about an end to insidious tyranny. Hippias fell to the ground under the force of their blows while the audience howled and applauded, until a hush fell and Harmodius delivered one final, fatal blow. Brutus cast a glance at Cassius and saw that he held a hand to his mouth as though nauseated. 

While the conspirators were crowned with laurel wreaths and taken from the stage on thrones borne by the Chorus, Proitos turned to his guests with pride and announced that there would now be a dinner in their honour at his own house. Cassius, ever the statesman, recovered enough to smile with graceful ease and engage Proitos in conversation as the party left the theatre, and Brutus could do nothing but follow in their wake.

*

The next morning, Brutus woke in an unfamiliar bed, uncomfortably warm and with damp sheets twisted around his hips. With his head buried in the pillow he turned just enough to see that it was daylight, and to regret the vivid, pounding pain behind his eyes. The room was gloomy, but it smelt of sweat and sex, a heavy, sordid base-note to the cloying scent of olibanum and beeswax.

“Brutus.”

Holding a hand to his head, he raised himself enough to see that Cassius was standing beside the bed with an expression of abject unhappiness upon his face. He met Brutus’ eyes and frowned, schooling his features into a familiar, withering look of disappointment.

“Word from Decimus,” he said quietly, steadfastly averting his eyes from the lithe body entangled beside Brutus in the bedsheets. “Dolabella has acted rashly and seems to be in need of subtle persuasion to relinquish his claim on Syria. We should leave for Antiochia at once.”

Brutus nodded blearily, too tired and with his head swimming too vigorously to protest. “Yes.”

Cassius’ eyes at last flickered sideways and for a second an ugly grimace settled across his face. “There is time before we leave for you to recover at least some of your senses.” 

Brutus nodded, ashamed, and waited for Cassius to leave before he stumbled out of bed and summoned one of Proitos’ slaves to help him dress. The eunuch courteously continued to feign sleep and Brutus gratefully slipped out of the room without a word. 

Cassius remained distant for the rest of the day, and Brutus had neither the will nor the energy to coax him into conversation. They rode at opposite ends of the marching column until sunset, at which point Cassius departed for a tour of the camp in the company of the centurion of one of the Syrian legions and Brutus was left to eat his evening meal alone.

***


	6. Born Again

**Chapter 5  
Iterum Partum**

  
_Quid enim est melius quam memoria recte factorum, et libertate contentum negligere humana?_ – What could be more pleasant than, being mindful of one’s honest achievements and contented with liberty, to abandon all concern for the affairs of men?  
Brutus, Letter to Cicero ( _Epistulae ad Familiares_ , I.16)

**a.d. iii Id. Dec. 44**

In the Bithynian desert, Brutus often found his attention drifting while he sat at the table in his tent with maps spread before him, or out in the barren dirt with a wax tablet balanced on one dusty knee. He was daydreaming of the way things might have been, had he chosen a different path. No letters had come from Rome, except from his mother and his wife, and though Atticus wrote frequently from Athens with news of their mutual acquaintances, he never passed on word from Cicero.

When it became clear that the senate had forgotten them, the men they had called Liberators, he began to dream of Rome; for he missed her, the sights and smells of the city, the familiarity of streets he had known from childhood. Curiously he also began to think of Cicero not at his speeches, or swathed in his senatorial toga, but as he must have been at home, in the most private of times when nobody was watching but the slaves. He imagined Cicero at ease in the country, in a garden surrounded by peach trees. He imagined himself there too, and the laughter they might have shared. 

Reminiscences were inevitably coloured by the idealism of memory and just as he found it easy to forget the stink of the Tiber in the middle of summer, so too he forgot Cicero’s oft-times cowardly behaviour, his habit of toadying for favour. He remembered instead Cicero’s pragmatism and his acknowledgement of his own failings; his modesty and his pride. His favourite memories were of Cicero as he was on the rostra many years ago, accepting his consulship, and of the warmth and constancy of Cicero’s friendship in the many years since their return from Greece. It was difficult not to resent Cassius for all the qualities which he lacked, for though Cassius was also a man of subtlety and cunning, he was absolutely driven by his convictions, and unable to understand Brutus’ recent torment. It was the difference between he and Cicero which drove Brutus to resent Cassius the more, for all the months they had spent in the east, and all the devotion and patience Cassius had shown him. Cassius’ patience was not what he needed or desired, yet it was all he was ever given. 

Cassius, for his part, watched Brutus carefully from the other side of the tent, and resented him for the ease and elegance with which he inhabited their new rough attire, despite his drunkenness. Cassius was awkward out of his senatorial garb and knew it, well-aware that the more he tugged at the long sleeves of his robes, the more ridiculous he looked. 

He also resented Brutus’ air of self-flagellation, detested the unspoken accusation behind every dark glance in his direction. He suspected Brutus fervently wished that he could undo their association; that Junia had never been married off so young, that Cassius had never been invited into their home in the first place. He feared that Brutus was beginning to hate him and it made him vicious and spiteful in anticipation of a forthcoming rejection. He was driven by it, and by his lack of patience with Brutus’ enduring affection for the fools and sycophants they had left behind in Rome, to goad Brutus into uttering the words, once and for all. 

And when angry words had been spoken and things said which should not have been, he ached to prove to Brutus his own worthiness. It troubled him that Brutus should seem so bewildered by their circumstances, and seemed to be turning his confusion inward. Cassius had never been a covetous man, but he coveted so many of Brutus’ admirable qualities: his nobility, his conscience, his lack of ambition. His feelings towards Brutus were coloured by envy as much as by affection. He loved and resented him in equal portion, but knew – and it was this which pained him the most – that without him, he would be quite, quite lost. 

With a deep sigh he rose to his feet and nodded to their hosts, expressing regret that he was tired after a heavy day’s travelling, and wondered whether it might be possible to retire. He waited for Brutus to do the same, and was unsurprised by the inevitable shake of the head and Brutus’ tightening grip on his empty cup. 

“Until tomorrow, then, brother,” he murmured as he passed Brutus’ chair on his way out of the tent, with a fervent wish that Brutus not begin another important day with an aching head and a quaking belly. 

Brutus grunted in response and shook Cassius’ hand from his shoulder. 

It was with a heavy heart that Cassius made his way to their legions’ encampment, not only for the humiliation of quarrelling in the presence of their hosts, but also for the unending bitterness of loving such a man as Brutus.

*

.  
“Will we ever be able to return without inviting war?” Brutus asked quietly one day, his head ringing. Head bowed, despondent, he slumped over the remains of a late morning meal.

Cassius lifted his head from his paperwork. “You’re not homesick, surely?”

“For the city, perhaps." Brutus sighed. "Certainly not for my mother. Portia writes that she wishes I could go home, and I suppose it would be nice to see her.”

“Those are rather lukewarm sentiments,” Cassius said with a smile, but Brutus did not lift his gaze from the tabletop. “Is this because of a letter from Cicero? Has he begun asking us to return?”

Brutus sighed, unwilling to provoke another of Cassius’ bitter and detailed assassinations of Cicero’s character and motives. “Of course not. Surely you can understand why he hasn’t written; it’s dangerous for him in Rome these days.”

Cassius raised a sceptical eyebrow. “He’s certainly still digging his own grave, as far as Antony’s concerned.”

Brutus signalled the slave to pour more wine. “Cassius, don’t.”

“I’m not being deliberately unfeeling. I care for Cicero, but he’s put himself into bed with a lion, and it can only be a matter of time before the brute shows his teeth.”

“You would like nothing better than to hear Cicero’s been exiled and all his property forfeit.”

Cassius feigned shock. “Ah, you’ve offended me! I wish the fool no harm at all; I’m merely saying it is inevitable. The way Antony’s going, I expect he’ll soon start with the proscriptions; a Sulla for our times.”

“All the more reason for us to return,” Brutus said darkly. “And I’ll remind you again not to refer to Cicero in those terms; he is my friend, even if he is not yours.”

Cassius, as always, doubled his attack at the first sign of admonishment. “He’s certainly your friend enough to allow Antony to designate you Grain Monitor and banish you from Rome, but not enough to follow you to Greece as he did Pompey, or even to write to you. You have better friends, Brutus, if only you’d realise it.”

“Better friends indeed, Cassius, and look what your friendship has brought me!” Brutus rose swiftly from his seat, upending his cup and sending wine cascading to the floor. The slave hurried to the lectus, scrabbling beneath it for the cup and making a great show of mopping up the spillage. Brutus raised a hand to his head as though afflicted by a sudden headache and gestured for the slave to cease. “Juno’s cunt! Leave it!”

“Brutus, that’s enough!” Cassius was on his feet, striding across the tent to grasp Brutus by the shoulders, only to be pushed away impatiently.

“For nearly a year,” Brutus said, not deigning to lower his tone, “for nearly a year we’ve been whoring ourselves about in the desert, fighting for control of our own provinces and begging for scraps from the tables of these puppet satraps – and for what? Cicero would ask us to return to finish what we began when we committed murder in the name of the republic! For the sake of the _republic_ , Cassius, look at what we’ve become!”

“Brutus,” Cassius’ tone was intimate, shutting out the slaves. Brutus tried to swipe a palm across his eyes, but Cassius’ hands on either side of his face prevented him. “Brutus, this is not the time -”

“Let us go back to Rome,” Brutus pleaded. “You persuaded me that Caesar’s death would allow us to restore the honour of the commonwealth, so let us go back to Rome and help Cicero to accomplish it.”

“I persuaded you of nothing,” Cassius said urgently. “We took what steps were necessary to save Rome from the rule of a tyrant. We did our patriotic duty. You delivered the final blow to corruption and tyranny.”

“You handed me the knife, and stood behind me with Caesar’s blood on your face,” Brutus hissed, his voice cracking with the pain of remembering the feeling of the hilt of that knife slippery between his fingers, and the gasping sound Caesar had made when the blade was driven between his ribs. “So do not speak to me of patriotic duty; if I had done my _patriotic_ duty I would not – I could not have – ”

“I placed the dagger in your hand because I believed it was for the _best_. It was the only way to ensure an end to Caesar’s outrages, and to secure and preserve the republic.”

“Then I wish to Jupiter the republic had died shitting in the rubble of the Curia Julia, and we did not crawl on our bellies in the desert like rats in a sewer!” 

Cassius landed a backhanded slap across Brutus’ face and caught his wrist as he raised his arm to retaliate. “You’ve had too much wine, my friend.”

“Whenever you try to be domineering, you sound exactly like Antony,” Brutus sneered, pulling his arm free and raising his fingers to his mouth. His eyes narrowed when he pulled them away stained red. “I’ll see you tomorrow, when I am no longer the worse for drink.”

Cassius watched with immediate remorse as Brutus tossed his cup onto the table and it landed and rolled with a solid crack. His anger had died the very moment his hand connected with Brutus’ face; he had never wanted to watch Brutus' eyes widen with pain and surprise, only to bring him to his senses. He waited until the last moment before putting out a hand to grasp him by the arm and pull him back from exiting the tent.

“Brutus, forgive me.” 

“You have overstepped a mark, tonight,” Brutus said, fingers at his lip again, looking angry and bewildered.

Cassius stepped forward and embraced him as he had a thousand times, pressing a kiss to the injured cheek. “What a pair we make,” he murmured. “You see, I would rather kiss you than argue with you, and yet these days it’s all we seem to do.” 

He kissed him a second time, on the other cheek, and raised a hand to the long hair at the nape of Brutus’ neck. “I am sorry,” he said and ignored the tremor in Brutus’ tense shoulders in order to pull him closer.

“Cassius - ”

“Forgive me, please.”

“Cassius.” Brutus’ eyes were closed as though in pain, and Cassius kissed him a third time. “Brother…”

He ignored, too, Brutus’ hand tightening on his wrist, unsure whether it was in warning or encouragement, and leant forward to rest his head against Brutus' own, their breath mingling heavily in the fetid, wine-warm air. “We are brothers only by marriage,” he said softly, “though I know that ought to be censure enough.”

He leaned forward and pressed a fourth kiss to the corner of Brutus’ mouth, and then a fifth, which was soft and restrained even though he was trembling from the long-ago familiarity of Brutus’ scent and taste. He began to coax Brutus gently into acquiescence, and from acquiescence into desire. 

They were greatly changed, both of them, from how they had been as young men in Greece, but Cassius found that he remembered every detail of how it was to make love to Brutus as each step unfolded. Brutus, perhaps unconsciously, responded similarly to the memory of Cassius’ touch and allowed himself to be kissed and divested of his clothes with a passive sort of willingness. It saddened Cassius but made him all the more determined to draw Brutus forth towards desire. For that reason, he worshipped Brutus with every breath, pouring kisses upon him like libations, while Brutus closed his eyes and clenched his fists in Cassius’ hair and then, finally, in the folds of the blanket upon the lectus.

“Brutus,” he murmured, his hands on the smooth skin above Brutus’ hips. His fingers swept the curve of the stomach and followed the taught lines of his thighs. “If you could only see yourself as I do and how truly magnificent you are…” 

He gazed at Brutus with tenderness beyond measure, but Brutus turned his head to the side with a grimace.

“No more words, Cassius,” he said. “Please, I am tired of talking.”

“Of course,” he said, “of course.”

He pressed a kiss to the hollow of Brutus’ collarbone, breathed in the smoke and wine and heady smell of warm skin, and felt the alien prickle of a beard against his cheek. He longed to relate a litany of Brutus’ virtues, and thought restraining himself a regrettable price to pay for sharing this moment with him. He had never demanded allegiance, or love, and was saddened by the fact that he had evidently not yet succeeded in securing it through constant patience and tolerance. He applied himself to the task in hand and attempted to demonstrate his affection through actions rather than words.

In the end, therefore, he took Brutus in terse silence, just as Brutus had asked. Brutus did not make any sound as he was breached, nor did he display any emotion in his bloodshot eyes other than a great, yearning depth of self-hatred. Cassius detested it, and encouraged him to turn his face away, rather than subject them to the ordeal of continuing eye to eye. It made for disagreeable fucking; Cassius did not want it to be couched in such vulgar terms, but could find few fitting alternatives. They were silent except for the slap of skin and the panting of breath. Cassius thrilled when Brutus’ eyes fell closed and his face became contorted; he altered the angle of his approach and shuddered deeply when Brutus gave a low, reluctant moan of pleasure. 

The air was heavy with spices and wine and Cassius tried to steady himself, hands slipping on slick skin. 

“Brutus, I cannot – ” he gasped, shaking with the effort of self-control. A tiny frown creased Brutus’ forehead and for a moment Cassius wondered whether he would be pushed away and this forlorn endeavour abandoned altogether. 

Suddenly, however, Brutus lifted impatient hands to slip around Cassius’ arching back, fingers and palms falling into the valley of the lower part of his spine and urging him forward, answering the movement with an impetuous twist of his hips. Cassius gave a choked cry and was overwhelmed, wanting nothing more than release, while loath to allow the moment to come to an end. 

“Do you need any further permission?” Brutus asked tightly between clenched teeth, having finally opened his eyes, and Cassius understood enough to know that his was not the face Brutus wished to have seen.

It was enough to make him tear Brutus’ hands free, leaning forward to pin them beside his head, driving into him with unprecedented force, until the pair of them were shaking and gasping and clutching at each other hard enough that there would surely be bruises in evidence come the morning. They rocked and fought against one another and each of them understood the other’s need for their release to be hard-won. 

Finally, Cassius cried out against the curve of Brutus’ neck, while Brutus looked away and said nothing, only tightening the line of his lips and clenching his hands around Cassius’ restraining fingers. They quivered through disjointed thrusts and aftershocks and came, panting, to a conclusion, while Brutus avoided Cassius’ eyes as assiduously as Cassius stroked gentle, shaking hands over the unresisting body beneath him. 

“Forgive me,” he murmured, after a long, uncomfortable moment of silence. He swept still-unfamiliar long hair from Brutus’ brow, perturbed by Brutus’ movement away from the touch of his hand. “I hadn’t meant to be so rough.”

Brutus shifted, forcing Cassius to move from between his legs and settle awkwardly at the side of the couch. “No one could find fault with you for accepting companionship where it was offered,” he said bitterly. 

Cassius looked at him sharply to find his tunic being handed to him and Brutus’ back resolutely turned.

*

**a.d. v Kal. Ian. 43**

Brutus had been drinking steadily since sunset and pacing like a caged lion inside the stifling tent of the premier of Bithynia. Cassius was acutely aware of him, a distraction at the edge of his concentration, making him impatient with the satrap’s constant, obscene chatter. Cassius had been flattering him for hours now, throughout dinner and during the dancing by seven shaven-headed eunuchs; there had to be an agreement reached soon, or he thought he might go mad.

“I killed him,” Brutus was saying, drunken and gesticulating. Cassius hated to see him embarrass himself, but was tired of intervening only to be brushed angrily aside. “I had to, you know, it’s in my blood – my ancestor dethroned the tyrant Tarquin – ”

The satrap’s guards laughed.

“I understand there were a great many who stabbed your Caesar,” said one.

Brutus swayed uncertainly. “I delivered the final blow.”

“Seems a bit cowardly, no?” the guard said to his companion. They laughed again, low and mocking.

“You say what?”

“He was wounded already, dying, defenceless, alone, and you stabbed him yet again.”

“He was a tyrant,” Brutus replied, repeating only what Cassius had been murmuring to him over recent months. “Our killing him was a necessity; a neccessary, noble act.”

“Perhaps I shall find a fresh corpse to stab and become great myself.”

“You dare to insult me?” Brutus demanded. “A senator of Rome? Stand up!”

Cassius excused himself to the satrap, who had turned his attention to the argument and was eagerly watching it unfold. He strode to Brutus’ side and wrapped his arms around him in an attempt to bundle him outside. “Brutus, perhaps we should get some air?”

“No, this man – this dog – insults me – ”

The guard was on his feet. “Dog, he says? I am a dog?”

“Excuse us,” Cassius interjected, “it’s the wine, the heat. Now, come, we are guests here, looking for favour,” he hissed, a hand on Brutus’ chest, leading him from the tent. Brutus sagged against him, his breath hot and heavy with wine.

“Favour? I ask no favour from such animals.”

Cassius took him by the shoulders and turned him, shook him, “Control yourself, you fool!”

Brutus faltered and his eyes flickered, focusing for a second in surprise. “They called me a coward,” he said, sounding childish and wounded. Cassius sighed, despising the necessity of keeping the peace. He folded an arm around Brutus’ shoulders.

“Come with me, come on,” he said gently and led him away towards their own tents.

“I am a senator,” Brutus protested thickly, stumbling.

It was only a short distance to the camp, but Brutus was heavy and slow and when Cassius deposited him on a bench inside his own tent, he sat slumped and miserable, eyes half-closed. Cassius grasped him by the shoulders and slid to his knees before him.

“My friend,” he murmured. “You have lost your way.”

“Ah, leave me alone!” Brutus slurred, shoving at him clumsily.

“Brutus,” he implored, soothing him the way he had when they were little more than children and Brutus had disgraced himself with drink for the first time.

“Leave me alone!” 

Such was the hatred in Brutus’ wide, angry eyes that Cassius felt some part of his heart fold in upon itself. He realised, as Brutus stared at him, trembling, that he had made a mistake in believing that he could withstand any insult for the sake of remaining at Brutus’ side. 

He got to his feet, and Brutus watched him. Cassius hoped he would say nothing, for he did not want to open himself to rejection and cruelty. He did not deserve it, he thought, despite the long list of crimes Brutus imagined him to have committed. 

“I’m sorry,” Brutus called out, but only once he had already left.

*

The camp lay on the incline of a shallow river valley. In the spring, the stream would flood and sweep all trace of their presence into the larger river of which it was a tributary, but for now the river bed was a cracked mosaic of dried mud.

With a pounding head and a sick feeling of shame and guilt roiling uncomfortably in his stomach, Brutus followed its course until he reached the edge of the band of fig trees which marked the start of the fertile ground, then turned his horse west, towards the setting sun. He followed the path by the reeds until he reached a shallow landing stage where the local people dried reeds for weaving. Once there, he dismounted and looked around, as though for the first time taking in the majesty of his surroundings. He had listened to the Bithynians speak of the river as though it were a living creature; if Janus should fail him and the Bithynians be proved right, perhaps he would be devoured, like a rat eaten by a python. Perhaps that would be all he deserved. 

He began to undress, stripping off his tunic and robe and shedding them like a snake’s skin, letting them fall to the dusty ground, where they lay abandoned in a heap about his ankles. The sun slid over each piece of virgin flesh as it was revealed and sank into his skin as though he were being warmed by an ebbing fire. His toes flexed, curled into the soft ground of the river bank, and he felt the mud move between them, cold and smooth. Each physical sensation was heightened, until he felt blinded and deafened, overcome by the sun on his skin and the earth beneath his feet. 

He started forward and walked into the water until it rose up his legs, his thighs, over his cock and belly, and he waded out into the rush of the current. It swirled about him and caught in lazy eddies where the river parted around him and then met again, moulding itself to his shape. 

“Divine Janus,” he said, raising his hands to the sky. “As this day follows the night, let me start my life anew. As the shore is scoured by the tide, let me be cleansed. As the seed becomes the flower, let me be born again.”

He let himself sink into the water and held his head beneath its surface until his lungs burned.

***


	7. Power and Freedom

**Chapter 6  
Imperium et Libertas**

It was dark when Brutus returned to the camp. Fires had been lit and torches burned at either side of the entrance to his tent. He saw from the flickering shadows that Cassius stood waiting for him.

He ducked inside and silently removed his coat, detesting its weight, its foreignness, its smell of hot sand and mutton fat. 

“Where have you been?” Cassius asked quietly, evenly, in a tone of voice which implied that he did not desire a fight. “What have you been up to, that you need to creep back to camp under cover of darkness?”

Brutus sighed. “Did you ask the sentry to report to you when I returned?”

“Yes,” Cassius replied, stepping out of the shadows and tugging the heavy linen flaps of the tent closed behind him. “I asked Vennius to post extra men along the approach to the gate. You've been gone hours."

"It will be round the camp by morning that we have quarrelled."

"Perhaps." Cassius shrugged, his eyes sharp and sincere. "Brutus, where have you been?”

Brutus turned to look at him. “I have been at the river,” he said in a voice heavy with irony, “asking Janus for release from my torment. You don’t mean to tell me you were worried?”

Cassius sighed, “Of course I was worried. You left without even a personal guard.”

“But surely we’re amongst allies?” He regretted the bitterness in his words as soon as he had uttered them and lifted a hand in apology. “Forgive me, Cassius. It has been a long day.”

Cassius nodded and came closer. The calculating, mountain-lion look of months ago had gone and had been replaced by a frown of deep, anxious regret. He took Brutus’ hands and held them tightly for some moments, before pressing them to his lips in a kiss which might, between other men, have seemed merely fraternal. “Forgive me.”

Brutus inclined his head wearily, feeling only the absence of the anger that had fuelled him for so long. 

“Was it part of your strategy from the beginning to seduce me into compliance?” he wondered aloud.

Cassius smiled wanly, and Brutus realised that, with a glib comment, he had stumbled uncomfortably near to the truth. “After you rejected my clumsy attempts to flatter you months ago, I soon abandoned all hope of your ever being compliant; I don’t believe it would suit you.”

Brutus looked at him, trying to summon the will to detest him for his honesty. Instead, he felt tired to the bone, so exhausted by the effort of holding Cassius at a distance that he wanted to restore Cassius’ faith in him, simply to prove his worthiness to receive it. 

“You’re right, of course,” he agreed, clasping Cassius’ hands tightly. “As you always are.”

Cassius’ smile brightened and his tone took on something of a teasing, sardonic lilt. “On some subjects I consider myself to be something of an expert.”

Brutus wondered, though this time without any trace of irritation, what Cassius saw in him that was so fascinating and deserving of this constancy of devotion. The guilt he felt in remembering Cicero’s declaration to him before the departure from Velia prevented him from saying more, so he let go of Cassius’ hands and stepped away to take a seat at the table.

He motioned to the slave nearest the door and informed him that he wished to be shaved. A silver mirror, a neglected gift from the Oligarch of Damascus, stood propped between coffers against the far wall of the tent; as the slave departed to find a razor, Brutus sank into contemplation of his reflection.

“News has come again from Smyrna,” Cassius said, watching him as though he could hardly bear to tear away his gaze; it was the first time he had tried to seriously discuss politics with Brutus since his dalliance with the eunuch in Patara. “Dolabella’s new seizure of Trebonius’ goods and chattels smacks of Antony more soundly than the murder he committed to begin with – it’s a wonder those two snakes didn’t throw their lots in together sooner. One wonders why Cicero thought to marry his daughter to him in the first place. For all his much-vaunted wisdom - ”

“Please, Cassius,” Brutus interrupted firmly. “Not tonight.”

Cassius said nothing for a moment, but was not in the mood to needle him further. “I simply thought you might like to be kept informed. Our route back to Greece will have to take us through Smyrna again; we can add another legion or two to our numbers once we relieve Dolabella of his new position.”

Brutus glanced at him, brows knitting into an expression of utmost unhappiness. “We’ve had no word from Cicero – the senate haven’t yet asked us to return to Rome.”

“They’re busy squabbling with Antony over his claim on Gaul; he’ll soon lose his patience and force them to declare war, and then our legions will make us extremely attractive prospects indeed.”

“I have no desire to be another Caesar.”

“No one would wish you to be, least of all me. But you are the great Marcus Junius Brutus – you are the republic, now.”

“No man is supposed to be the republic, Cassius,” Brutus said wryly, “that is precisely the point of it.”

The slave returned, bearing a bowl of warmed water and a cloth and razor which he set down on the table, and proceeded to lay a second cloth around Brutus’ shoulders. Brutus relinquished himself to the slaves’ ministrations and sat back in his chair, watching his reflection in the mirror with the greater part of his attention, and Cassius out of the corner of his eye. 

Cassius had taken on something of the intent, feline look of old, watching impassively as the slave wetted Brutus’ face and began to trim away the three month’s growth of beard. He had aged badly in the months since they sailed for the East, but it only made him appear hungrier, gave him a determined look which Brutus found appealing. 

“Give that to me,” Cassius said suddenly when the slave had sharpened the razor. He held out his hand and the slave obeyed. 

Brutus supposed word of his and Cassius’ altercation had spread amongst the slaves by now; it explained their unusual solicitousness in slipping away and blending tactfully into the shadows when he and Cassius should find themselves at any time alone together. There had been a sense of tense anticipation between them, and Brutus had not liked to test it. That atmosphere now seemed to be in the process of dissipating gently, like fog in the heat of the rising sun.

Stepping behind Brutus’ chair, Cassius met his eye in the mirror and smiled. “Permit me?”

Brutus did not wish to think of Cassius' long fingers on the hilt of a knife. He tipped back his head and closed his eyes. 

“All this hair,” he said ruefully. “I’ll be glad to have it off.”

“I rather think it suits you,” Cassius replied, laying his hand lightly upon Brutus' shoulder. “You look like some sort of wandering philosopher.”

“I think it makes me look like a shepherd.”

Cassius laughed and slipped his hand beneath Brutus’s jaw, turning his head and wetting the skin and then drawing the blade in a gentle stroke from his ear to the corner of his jaw. The razor felt cool and pleasant against his skin. The process of shedding the beard was one of stepping back into his old self; as Cassius drew the blade over his skin in careful strokes, he slowly became himself once more.

“Look,” Cassius said, when he had finished.

Brutus looked at their reflections, at Cassius’ hands on his shoulders, and the small, proud smile on Cassius’ face. 

“We are both looking a great deal older than I remember.”

“You look every inch the statesman,” Cassius murmured, and leaned forward to press a gentle kiss against his temple. “You are yourself again.”

*

**a.d. ii Id. Feb. 43**

When word arrived that Anthony had taken troops and departed for Gaul, Cassius sent to Decimus to expect their arrival in Ionia within the fortnight. The long march westwards, which would take them through Asia to Smyrna, before crossing the Hellespont and sweeping across the plains of Macedonia, could only end with Rome, or death. That prospect seemed to have brightened Brutus’ gloomy outlook, and Cassius was relieved to find himself no longer alone in shouldering the burden of command of their legions. 

Since the evening in Bithynia they had not lain together, but it was a measure of the restoration of their friendship that Brutus smiled now when Cassius addressed him, and spent his evenings immersed in conversation, rather than the wine jar.

“Word from Patara,” Cassius read out from a letter as Brutus was fitted for his new, ornamented cuirass. “They’ve capitulated to our demands and send sixteen thousand talents.”

“How many troops?”

“Seven thousand.”

“And the rest of Lycia?”

“No word as yet, but I imagine they’ll follow suit.”

“I’ll see that they do. We must be up to eight legions now.”

“Nine: twenty five thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalry, almost a match for Antony.”

“It’s good,” Brutus said, breathing deeply with the feel of the breastplate about him. “It’s very good.”

“Well,” Cassius agreed, with open, easy sincerity, looking him up and down, “you look magnificent. You should have your portrait done.”

“No, no time for such vanity.”

“It’d please your mother.”

Brutus laughed. “It would, wouldn’t it?”

“You know, speaking of Antony,” Cassius said, coming behind Brutus to adjust the straps on his shoulder plates, dismissing the slave with a nod of his head, “I hardly think it’s likely we’ll have to match him at all.”

Brutus turned to him and Cassius was struck by how much like his old self he looked, hopeful and familiar. “You have high hopes for Octavian, then?”

“Don’t you? Cicero must.”

Brutus smiled, as mentions of Cicero these days often made him, despite the long lull in communication from that quarter. There had been no word from him since the unexpected delivery of a transcript of a vitriolic speech against Antony, copied in Tiro’s tidy hand. 

“I knew him when he was a boy, when Caesar picked him out as an heir – he wasn’t much of a fighter, not in the same way Antony is, but he’s cunning. If he can outwit Antony and force him to an impasse, drive him further into Gaul before the spring, things will be looking well for us.”

Cassius nodded. “Either way, one will destroy the other, and we shall be more than a match for whichever’s left.”

*

Cicero once told Antony that he did not like to submit to mere implication; he much preferred threats to be overt, purely so that his cowardice might seem the more reasonable when he later tried to justify it to himself in the grey hours of sleeplessness which came to him just before dawn.

Octavian’s personal style of coercion defied all his attempts to rationalise it beyond the fact that the boy had an army at the gates of Rome, mitigated though it was by the fact that he and his advisers were little more than children. Cicero might admit to himself, in the deepest recesses of the night time, that promising to be dependent upon his consent had been a masterstroke for the boy, because he had always been susceptible to flattery. This was, after all, another Caesar at the gates of Rome, and Cicero was pleased with the thought that he would accomplish what Cato had not, preventing further civil strife and reviving his reputation as saviour of the republic. Yes, he rather liked that. 

Cicero was not afflicted by utter self-delusion as so many powerful men are. He knew perfectly well that he was vain and he was cowardly, but he was secure in the knowledge that he was also very clever.

*

“What an auspicious day! Many gave their lives that we might stand here once again, united in the government of a lawful republic. And how fitting that we welcome this new beginning by swearing in the youngest Consul in the history of Rome: Gaius Octavian Caesar!”

It really was the perfect little speech – grounding the appointment in the imagery of the religious, conservatism being Octavian’s watchword for the republic; a reminder of previous civil calamities to menace the more redoubtable senators into abeyance; and tacking Octavian’s consulship neatly onto the legend of the republic while making its illegality seems entirely unremarkable and even fitting for the occasion. Cicero felt justifiably pleased with himself, right up until Octavian’s own turn to take the floor. 

He was a strange, pale boy, sitting beneath a laurel wreath far too vibrant for his wan complexion. Cicero disliked the pretence of wearing the laurel wreath, the incomplete circlet somehow supposed to be a talisman against the return of the republic to a monarchy. On Octavian it gave him an inhuman appearance, his otherworldly pallor conspiring with the laurel crown to give him the countenance of a man playing at being a god. Cicero found it unnerving, particularly when the boy began to speak in that reedy, inelegant voice and proceeded to prove the adage about an ally underestimated being an enemy in the making.

“Esteemed senators,” young Caesar said, “I take this first moment before you not to glorify myself, but to honour my father. In his honour I declare that my term as Consul shall usher in a new era, an era of moral virtue, of dignity. The debauchery and chaos we have had to endure will end. Rome will be again as she once was; a proud republic of virtuous women and honest men!”

These were words of which Cicero approved, being ones he wrote himself. The boy had proved a willing puppet for these sentiments, for there was nothing particularly revolutionary about them; on the contrary, they were a purposeful reminder of the days when the senate was the moral arbiter of the glorious republic, a useful piece of nostalgia. 

“I speak to you now, not as a soldier or as a citizen, but as a grieving son.”

The boy’s voice deepened, but Cicero thought it menacing rather than powerful. It was a deviation from the script and it did not, Cicero saw at once, bode at all well.

“As my first act in this reborn republic, and in honour of my father I propose a motion; to declare Brutus and Cassius murderers and enemies of the state.”

The senators grew uneasy and began to murmur, and Cicero looked about at the anxious, surprised faces and knew that they were too desirous of stability to defy Octavian if he were allowed to table the motion and receive a quorum for the vote.

He hurried across the floor where the very act had taken place. He applauded Octavian's invocation of Caesar's ghost, and despised the attempt to shame the pedarii into obedience. 

“My dear boy, this is not what we agreed.”

“It is not,” Octavian replied, serene, regarding him coolly with those unnerving, pale eyes. “Yet here we are.”

“Brutus and Cassius still have many friends, you will split the chamber. The unity of the republic – ”

“Step away from my chair,” said Octavian, in a voice of ice and iron. 

He looked at the boy, with his toga virilis and his laurel wreath and realised, suddenly, the terrible mistake he had made. What is a circlet on a tyrant’s head, but a crown? It was bewildering to find himself so thoroughly outplayed.

He returned to his seat with his mind whirling furiously with thoughts of the republic, the immediate need to retire to the country, and last and most shamefully of Brutus. 

“My father died on this floor,” the boy was whispering, gesturing to the spot where Caesar’s body had lain. His audience held its breath, entranced; Cicero acknowledged it an effective, sickening little piece of drama. “Right there. Stabbed twenty seven times, butchered by men he called his friends. Who will tell me that is not murder? Who will tell my legions, who love Caesar as I do, that is not murder?”

Sandals on marble, the precise rhythm of soldiers trooping onto the senate floor. Cicero felt a sudden rush of sympathy for poor old Cato. The legionaries unsheathed their swords and the rasp of cold steel cut through the rising hubbub.

“Who will speak against the motion?”

Cicero sank into his seat as predictably as none of the other senators stood to oppose the new Caesar. He remained there long after the house had emptied.

“Some willow tea, perhaps?” suggested Tiro, who had slipped in to sit beside him.

“Henbane, more like,” he said dryly. “I’ve been outmanoeuvred by a child.”

“To the country then?” Tiro asked gently and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Some fresh air and sleep will do you good.”

Cicero ignored him and made a swift, impetuous decision. “Take a letter: To Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus – ”

“Dominus,” Tiro interrupted, casting a glance about them as though legionaries might spring from behind the columns to arrest them. "If Octavian hears that you are in communication with Brutus – ”

“Don’t talk,” Cicero said firmly, “write: ‘Heroes of the republic, greetings.’”

***


	8. Interlude: Two Letters on the Subject of Antony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the following letters:  
> 834 (Brut. II, 3): M. Iunius Brutus to Cicero (at Rome)  
> 840 (Brut. I, 2, 3-6): To M. Iunius Brutus (at Dyrrachium)  
> Translations are partly mine, but mostly the Shackleton Bailey versions available in the Loeb Classical Library editions of _Epistulae ad Familiares_.

**Chapter 6a:  
Two Letters on the Subject of Antony**

_M. Junius Brutus Cicero S.D._

_Cicero, I hope you haven’t been waiting for me to thank you for your last dispatch; that has long since become unnecessary in our friendship. I have read your two speeches, and I feel sure you won’t be waiting for me to praise them. I don’t know whether they say more for your spirit or for your genius, and I wholeheartedly agree that they should be called by the proud name of ‘Philippics’, as you jestingly suggested._

_You asked me to reiterate my intentions towards the republic once decisive action has been taken with regards to Antony, in which respect you seem to be trusting to your hopes rather too fondly. My response must be hypothetical, as I can only tell you what I would do in those circumstances rather than basing my arguments on a more substantial form of reality. My only conclusion is that the Senate or the people of Rome must pass judgement on those citizens who support him. You will no doubt protest that calling men hostile to the state ‘citizens’ is impropriety itself! On the contrary, what the Senate has not decreed, nor the Roman people ordered, I do not take it upon myself to prejudge, nor do I make myself the arbiter. This much I maintain: in dealing with a person whose life circumstances did not oblige me to take, I have neither been cruel nor indulged his corruption. In my judgement it is much more honourable and profitable to the commonwealth to refrain from bearing hard on the unfortunate than to make endless concessions to the powerful._

_Dyrrachium, kal. Apr._

*

_Cicero M. Iunius Bruto S.D._

_I had already written and sealed a letter to you when the last one from you was delivered. I had been considering making my escape from Italy when the report of your approval of my speeches against Antony recalled me. It was after all you, Brutus, at Velia, who urged me forward. Grieved though I was to be returning to the city from which you, her liberator, were taking flight – something which I myself have done in days gone by, in circumstances of similar peril – I proceeded nonetheless and returned to Rome. There, quite unsupported, I have tried to shake Antony’s position, and it gratifies me to read that I have your approval for my efforts._

_In some matters, however, I fear we are not in such close agreement. I am far from approving of the distinction you draw when you say that we should be keener to prevent civil wars than to wreak vengeance on the defeated. I strongly disagree with you. I consider myself to be as merciful a man as you, but salutary severity is better than the hollow appearance of mercy. If we want to be merciful, we shall never be without civil war. However, that is your problem. I have no desire to quarrel, and I can say of myself what Plautus’ father says in Song of Sixpence: ‘My time is nearly over. You’re the party most concerned.’ Believe me, Brutus, you and Cassius will be overwhelmed if you do not take care. You will not always have a people, a senate and a leader of the senate so disposed to liking you; you may take that as a Delphic oracle!_

_Roma, ad. xiv kal. Mai._

***


	9. The Bravery of a Nervous Man

**Chapter 7  
Virtus Ignavi**

  
_After all, any rash fool can be a hero if he sets no value on his life, or hasn’t the wit to appreciate danger. But to understand the risks, perhaps even to flinch at first, but then to summon the strength to face them down – that in my opinion is the most commendable form of valour, and that was what Cicero displayed that day.  
\- Lustrum_ (Robert Harris)

**a.d. iv Non. Iul. 43**

_Brutus to M. Cicero, fondest greetings._

_It is my most profound wish that this letter should find you at ease in the country, far removed from all thoughts of intrigue and conspiracy; I know you well enough to guess, however, that you are at the centre of a veritable web of communications. It is because of this that I make my missive a brief one, at least to grant you respite from another rambling summary of our recent exploits. No doubt you have all the news already from Atticus._  


_We find Thracia as monotonous as Bithynia, with the benefit that the Thracians, though undoubtedly barbaric, are not nearly so unremittingly unpleasant as I found the Bithynians, with their many perversions. It is gratifying to sweep through these cities where once we came as supplicants and have them capitulate without thought of resisting. My pride, as you know, has always been a millstone around my neck, but its weight has been somewhat abated by these past weeks’ travel.  
_

_I have not the time to enquire after every aspect of your current situation, but please believe that it is my fervent wish that you are content, and are able to enjoy a leisurely way of life without making too much trouble for Tiro on account of boredom.  
_

_My fondest thoughts are with you, as always._

*

On the long journey through the Provinces towards Greece, Brutus and Cassius had learned only to voice their deepest, innermost thoughts to one another under the cover of darkness; it seemed safer that way, as though to express misgivings under the glare of the Thracian sun would be an inauspicious sort of oath, a guarantee of failure.

“Should there be any reason to doubt Cicero’s judgement?” Cassius asked quietly, one evening on the shores of the Black Sea. “He knows Octavian better than either of us, and even he seems unsure what the boy’s next move will be.”

Brutus glanced up at him and gave the question careful consideration. For his own part he would trust Cicero’s judgement to Hades and back – for he had been proven far more prudent than either of the pair of them in all matters thus far – but Cassius, of course, would no sooner accept that argument than he might journey north to pledge allegiance to Antony. 

“Whatever action Octavian takes will have the same result,” he replied eventually. “Antony is in no state to march east; he’s been trapped in Gaul for the better part of three months. If Octavian were to come after us before finishing off Antony, we’d be in northern Greece at least before he could reach us, and we have the advantage of five legions and men who are not exhausted from fighting through the autumn. We’d be in Italy even sooner than we thought.”

Cassius watched him quietly for a moment, frowning as though doing complicated calculations and unhappy with the result. “You don’t speak about Rome anymore, only of Italy. Are you tired of the idea of being the saviour of the republic?”

“Yes,” Brutus answered immediately, “of course I’m tired of it. It was a role I didn’t mean to seek and thus far it has been exhausting.” He gave a small, wistful smile. “But, even more, I am simply tired of the east. I have such a desire to see the countryside again.”

Cicero’s last letters had been full of talk of his life at Formiae, of eating peaches straight from the tree and games of draughts, and Brutus thought it sounded perfectly idyllic. He was formulating a plan, of which he had breathed not a word to Cassius, to retire from politics immediately in the aftermath of their return to Rome; he would leave the business of running the state to the senate, and move permanently to a villa in the country. It would, perhaps, be an hour-or-so's ride from Formiae, and he would often invite Cicero to dinner; it would only be courtesy to insist that Cicero remain until the morning, and they would both of them be of so little interest to the business of Rome, so insignificant, that no one would care that the guest quarters invariably stood empty.

*

Contrary to Brutus’ concerns that he might be beset with boredom, removed from Rome and taking leisure time in the country, Cicero was keeping himself commendably busy. Tiro kept up a steady stream of communication with concerned parties and friends so that he might not feel ignorant of significant events, and provided numerous dispositions from local legal cases with which Cicero could occupy himself. Together in the evenings they reminisced, reliving the glories of their youth, from Verres to Catalina and the business with the Allobroges, and thus tried to combat the dreaded feelings of uselessness and inaction.

He was also in receipt of a steady flow of correspondence from the east, bringing news of the progress of the legions. He became aware that a note of hopefulness had begun to creep into Brutus’ prose, and awaited news of his and Cassius’ journey into Greece with selfish anticipation. 

In the meantime, he had also taken to tutoring Hector, the son of his estate’s redoubtable farm manager, in matters of his broader education. Cicero delighted in the company of intelligent children, for it reminded him of the happy days he had spent with Tullia and Marcus, setting them on opposing sides of a debate simply for the joy of the babble of their voices as they chattered and argued. Often he was impressed by the capacity of the young for seeing to the heart of the most complex of moral or political matters – it was for this reason that he did not mind when young Hector spoke up one morning with shy determination.

“My father says Brutus and Cassius are heroes,” he said hesitantly, while pretending to consider where to put down his next draught. “He says they should come back to Italy so that they can put the Republic to rights – ”

Tiro shot the boy a swift, admonishing look, but Cicero shook his head with a smile, “No, no, Tiro. It does me good to answer to this sort of youthful enquiry. Carry on, Hector.”

The boy still hesitated, but jutted out his chin as he continued. “My father says Caesar was a tyrant and deserved what he got.”

“And what do you think?”

Hector considered the question before he answered. “I think the law should prevent the rise of tyrants.”

“And therefore?”

“Therefore Brutus and Cassius did what any Roman should,” Hector pronounced defiantly. 

Cicero considered him silently for a moment, envious of the certainty with which Hector held these inherited beliefs of his. “What, then, would you advise in the current situation?”

Hector was thoughtful again, earnestly searching for the answer and the best way to express it. “Reform,” he answered carefully. “So that the republic could be like it was when we conquered Carthage.”

“Reform can be an unpleasant business,” Tiro pointed out kindly, casting an eye over the game board.

Hector frowned, puzzled. “I don’t understand why the people didn’t rise up in revolution against Caesar,” he said.

“The people liked him,” Cicero replied, musing over his next move. “And they were afraid of unrest.” 

“Terror is what comes in the wake of revolution, Hector; that’s why,” Tiro added.

“But what Caesar did was illegal,” he boy said, frowning more deeply. He moved his piece impetuously and Cicero took it with his next move. “And it was wrong for Brutus and Cassius to be sent away. I would have done the same if I were them,” he added defiantly. 

Cicero looked at him and felt a great wash of sorrow; he too had once been a boy full of conviction and righteous indignation. He remembered how infuriating it had been to be told by adults that he would grow out of his fervour and learn the art of compromise. He had looked on compromise as a form of betrayal, and had been so disappointed and dismayed to recognise the first signs of it in himself, when all the business had begun with Sulla and he had been forced to depart for Athens for fear of proscription. 

“I’ve no doubt you would,” he said, wryly, “but one day you’ll know that bravado is not necessarily the same thing as bravery, though that is a difficult lesson to learn.”

Hector was dissatisfied with the reply and shifted in his seat, but Tiro pre-empted any further argument by laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder and softly pointing out the trap Cicero had laid for him in the left-hand corner of the board. 

“Tiro, if you insist on telling Hector how to win, you may as well play him yourself.”

Tiro merely smiled and Cicero found he could not summon the effort to continue to pretend to be annoyed; it was too pleasant a day to spoil with bickering, so he chuckled and flicked his gamepiece across the board. “Very well, very well. I surrender in the face of insurmountable odds.”

While Hector ran off to tell his father about his victory Cicero settled back in his chair to enjoy the sunshine, troubled by Hector’s innocence, and thankful that Tiro had intervened to prevent the boy from asking any more searching questions. It would have been easy to say to a child that it was impossible to explain the complexities and nuances of his personal loyalties, but Hector’s bewilderment would have been damning judgement on his many infidelities. How pleasing it would have been to tell the child that he had always been true to his principles, but that would have been an outrageous lie.

“Tiro!” he called, needing something to put his listlessness to rest. “Tiro, find me some paper, I wish to write to our friends in the east.”

*

_Cicero M. Junius Bruto, warmest greetings._

_I was pleased to receive your letter and indeed grateful for your compassion in not relating your exploits in exhaustive detail – I am inundated with reports from friends, not least my son who is with your legions in Macedonia, and Atticus who makes it his mission to keep me informed of your and Cassius’ every move westwards._  


 _Your designs for my peaceful retirement are not entirely without realisation; I am teaching the son of the manager of my estates to play draughts, and he provides better conversation than can be found at a great number of the best dinner parties in Rome. Your company is sorely missed, however; I hold that it is not a vain hope that I will soon feel the benefit of it once again.  
_

_Reports from Gaul are, as you are no doubt aware, full of welcome news. Antony’s situation continues unresolved; indeed, I am impressed by the young Caesar’s tenacity in keeping him in check. I wonder if he will press the advantage during the winter – to do so would prove decisive. It would certainly emulate the behaviour of his so-called father. I rather think, however, that he will take more pleasure in starving Antony until the spring, welcoming his humiliation almost as much as his eventual capitulation. The boy is strange and badly advised, and has proven himself dangerous to misjudge, therefore we must wait and see.  
_

_You must realise the dissatisfaction inherent in reporting to you news of these events when I am myself so far removed from the nucleus of the situation. It is undoubtedly prudent to remain here for the time being, though my thoughts frequently turn to the east and I wonder often whether I might be of better use to the republic were I to join you there. As it is, we continue as we must.  
_

_All my greatest wishes are for your safe and swift return.  
_

_Your great friend, M. Tullius Cicero_

Brutus received this latest from Cicero with a smile and a lighter heart. Cicero would not join them in the east, of course, but it was a pleasant fantasy to imagine that he was at least considering it.

*

It was a warm, sunny day in early October and Cicero was once again playing draughts with Hector, teaching him a complex manoeuvre with which to impress his father, while peppering the conversation with snippets of the story of his defeat of Catalina. The boy was hanging on his every word, despite having heard the story innumerable times before, and it made Cicero smile to see such eagerness.

“Tell me again about the Allobroges,” Hector begged, hungry for details. He still clung to the childish belief that all peoples outside Italy must be savages little touched by civilisation, and thrilled to hear stories of human sacrifices and naked warriors daubed in warpaint. 

Cicero, who had travelled widely enough to witness the civilising influence of denarii and a good Samian wine on even the wildest of the tribes near their borders, smiled. 

“You’ve been listening to stories, again,” he admonished. “The Gauls do not all paint themselves blue, remember. Vercingetorix was not a giant when he was taken to the Tullianum.”

Hector grinned widely, knowing that Cicero would relent and, after their game, tell him tales of Gaul from Caesar’s Comentarii de Bello Gallico, which his father had forbidden him from reading.

Before the game could be concluded, they were interrupted by a commotion inside the house. 

Tiro led a man into the garden, introducing him as a farmer from the valley, an old veteran acquaintance of Hector’s father. His name escaped Cicero; Tiro had taken to dispatching spies the length and breadth of Italy in the hope of gaining some intelligence of Octavian’s plans for the state. 

He glanced up from the board. “Well, speak, man. What news?”

“I’ve just spoken to someone in Antony’s camp.”

“And?”

The man hesitated, eyes on Hector, who was paying more attention to his next move than to the conversation taking place beside him.

“I think your secrets will be safe with Hector. Out with it!”

Nevertheless, he leaned closer. Cicero could smell onion on the man’s breath as he whispered the news into his ear.

*

_Cicero Bruto, S.D._

 _My dear Brutus, I write in haste with urgent news. Octavian and Anthony are reconciled; their two armies are united. They plan to descend on Greece and take you by surprise with an overwhelming force._

“Dominus, armed men are at the door!”

_You must retreat to Asia before the trap is sprung._

“You must run!”

Cicero shrugged Tiro away and continued writing. “No,” he said. “Too late for that.”

He saw, now, as he scattered sand over the papyrus and bundled it into a messenger’s case, the inevitability of what must come next. It was strangely warm for an autumn day – the summer’s second crop of peaches seemed to have flourished and ripened suddenly overnight – and sweat had beaded on his forehead and above the neck of his tunic. 

He thrust the case at the most trusted of his messengers, the eldest son of a local merchant family, another of Tiro’s finds, cocksure but fleet-footed. 

“On your life, you _must_ get this letter to Brutus, understand? _On your life_.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tiro hurried to show the man the back pathway that led down to the road, and Cicero grimly tried to remember whether there were any matters he needed to attend to before his assassin should arrive, all the while calculating complex mental arithmetic of distances and travelling times. Between Formiae and Northern Greece lay many hundreds of miles.

“So, you Cicero, then?”

Cicero turned. 

A soldier stood at the end of the garden path, big enough for two men and wearing a careworn veteran’s tunic, sweat-stained beneath the arms. Cicero might have wept, had it not been for the anticlimactic, deadening sense of resignation which swept over him, that this was to be his ignominious end, in a kitchen garden, after all his long years of life. He had always hoped he might be granted the grace of a coward’s death, to slip from life at home with his loved ones close at hand, at a prodigious old age, mourned by the people and feted by the senate. 

“What is your name, young man?”

“Titus Pullo, sir. Late of the Thirteenth.”

“Ah, the famous Titus Pullo! I am honoured.”

“Likewise, sir.”

Cicero wondered at the cruelty of happenstance, that one of Caesar’s celebrated brutes should be the one sent to dispatch him. No doubt this ruffian crossed the Rubicon at Caesar’s side – and were the Thirteenth not under Antony’s command when their ships were swept onto shoals on their way to Pharsalus? He found it difficult to remember.

“Mind if I pick some peaches?”

“What? Oh, yes. Take what you want.”

Titus Pullo smiled. “Thank you. Nice present for the wife.”

Cicero looked at the sky and saw a vulture circling lazily overhead.

Meanwhile, the desperate missive to Brutus ended its journey not a mile away by the side of the road, and soon sat upon the head of Lucius Vorenus Minor, fashioned by his eldest sister into a hat for him to wear. Later, Lucius would use it to wipe away the peach juice that ran down his chin, and throw it away with the rest of the rubbish from their picnic. It would end its days in Rome, crowning a midden on the Aventine, smeared with shit and proclaiming its message for the benefit of none but the vegetable peelings.

_For the love of all the gods, Brutus, if you are safe then I will not consider my death to have been a futile sacrifice. I beg you, do not think of facing Antony and Octavian now in some empty act of bravery. You are Rome’s last hope of deliverance; my last and best thoughts are with you, as always._

_Cicero_

***


	10. A Debt of Nature

**Chapter 8  
Debitum Naturae**

Autumn had barely fallen in northern Greece. The sun was still hot as the troops marched west, beating heavily upon them and making the mules stumble before the supply carts. It had been cool in the coast-wards breeze of the Bosphorus, but the plains of Thracia closed around them arid and barren, and soon rocks and dust were all there were to be glimpsed through the shimmer of the rising heat.

The legions marched in a single column, which snaked into the distance along the Via Egnatia. Parties of scouts reported nothing but wilderness and the odd Thracian village for miles in every direction, but the troops’ hearts grew lighter every day with the knowledge that each sunrise took them closer to Rome. 

In late October, as the nights began to turn chill, the scouts brought word of a Greek city, nestled between two rivers at the base of a wide valley, that they would pass before reaching the mountainous path into Macedonia. Brutus ordered a herald to be sent, bearing a greeting and demands for assurance of allegiance, in hope of an offer of hospitality and provisions. Kypsela swiftly capitulated, inviting the legions to camp on the plain at the foot of the acropolis, while the city’s inhabitants poured down the hillside to set up a market selling fruit, cakes and wine to the soldiers. 

Cassius went immediately upon their arrival to the city’s Bouleuterion to negotiate for a consignment of grain, but Brutus declined the offer to accompany him in favour of lazily supervising the newly-sprung marketplace. It was already a scene reminiscent of the markets in Rome; it was this which had inspired his confidence in once telling Caesar that the whole world was ripe for Roman rule, because from Hispania to Antiochia, human nature was essentially unchanging. Once a money-making scheme had been scented – and the arrival of the army always presented an opportunity for some person to make a tidy profit – then a population could be easily subdued.

Leaning against a wall in the autumn sun, mud-brick warming him through his clothes, Brutus smiled at the thought of what Cicero would make of such cynicism. Perhaps he would include this theory of his in his next letter to Italy, for nothing more than the simple pleasure of provoking an argument.

*

The sun had begun to set by the time Cassius and his bodyguards returned, having been assured of the gift of a proportion of the city’s recent harvest. Brutus had retired to the tents to study a map of the mountains which lay between the Hebrus river and the eastern plains of Macedonia. The going would be difficult, and the column would make slow progress through steep, rocky passes. Care would have to be taken with the supplies, loaded onto carts which were always in danger of overturning. The legions were used to such terrain after the long journey through Bithynia to the Hellespont, and would make satisfactory progress. Italy grew nearer with every step, after all.

Cassius stepped into the tent and drew off his cloak. He smiled at Brutus and came to stand behind him to look at the map, which Brutus had spread over his desk and weighted in one corner with the seal Cassius had had made for their official documents and letters.

“You’ve driven them down to prices that would bankrupt a city, were it not motivated by the fourteen legions camped at its gates, I take it,” Brutus said.

Cassius feigned surprise, “How can you tell?”

“Nothing puts a smile on your face like a successful day’s negotiation.”

Cassius laid a hand on Brutus’ shoulder, and stroked fingers lightly over the nape of his neck. “You know me far too well.” 

Brutus inclined his head to look Cassius in the eye, amusement playing at the corners of his mouth. Standing over him, Cassius looked younger than he had in months, the lines around his eyes somehow kinder, his usual expression of vague anxiety momentarily erased. Cassius’ fingers made minute incursions beneath the collar of Brutus’ tunic.

“Do you know,” he said, “I think this is the happiest I’ve seen you in years.”

Cassius smiled, a strange motion of features seen upside-down. “Not, perhaps, the happiest, but you are close to the mark.”

There was a shout outside the tent, a demand from the guard to know who approached.

“Centurion Vennius,” a muffled voice announced. “Correspondence for the Generals, sir!”

Cassius’ regretfully withdrew his hands from Brutus’ clothing, and Brutus rose to his feet. Vennius was allowed to enter, a letter case held at his side on a long shoulder-strap. He executed a sharp salute and extracted a sealed scroll from the case. 

“A letter from Titus Pomponius Atticus to General Brutus, sir.”

He held it out and Brutus stepped forward to take it. He looked down at the seal, an owl perched upon an olive branch, and shuddered as though an unseen hand had tipped ice into the back of his tunic. The seal broke easily, the letter unfurled, and he saw at once that it had been written by Atticus himself, rather than a slave; Atticus’ usually precise script was uneven and blotched, speaking of his haste. 

_Atticus Bruto S.D._

_I write to you in lieu of our dear friend Cicero to give you news of the same, of the sort which we have all dreaded, and which it will draw the blood from your heart to hear. I am in no state of mind to prevaricate, and am sure you would not thank me if I were to do so, so I will state the past week’s events as starkly as my grief will allow: our friend Cicero had been at his house in Formiae, having left the city, as you know, in the hope of avoiding those proscriptions by which the commonwealth has lately been afflicted. Some five days ago Antony, having flown into a rage at the latest of Cicero’s speeches against him, dispatched armed men to Cicero’s estate, and had him foully murdered in retribution for his Phillipics, the last of which stung Antony’s pride the most by dint of carrying every essence of the truth. As I write these heavy words, our friend’s body has been hauled back to Rome; his head crowns the rostra in the manner of those belonging to the wretched victims of Marius and Sulla, and his hands are nailed to the senate door, in fulfilment of Antony’s promise of revenge._  


_Having imparted the worst of my news, I must reiterate Cicero’s most fervent wish: that you return to Rome and affect her liberation, the hope of which you kindled with your act on the Ides of March. The city awaits your return, as do your friends, and indeed all who love Rome.  
_

_Buthroto, ad. ii Non. Oct._

Brutus read the letter carefully, aware of Cassius at his back, and of the concern of Vennius before him, waiting – for what? What reply could Atticus possibly expect? What words could Brutus put to paper to adequately express the grief that had begun to curl around his heart at the very sight of Cicero’s name?

“Brutus?” Cassius’ voice was taut and anxious and a hand fell on his shoulder, shaking him from his trance. Cassius was suddenly beside him, trying to twitch the letter from his fingers. “Is it news from Cicero?”

He tugged the parchment out of Cassius’ grasp. “News about him, from Atticus.”

“And what does he say?” Cassius’ grip tightened. “Is there another speech against Antony?”

Visions of Cicero’s sightless eyes gazing emptily over the forum from a spike on the rostra rose unbidden before him. He clenched his fist around the letter and dropped it into Cassius’ waiting hand. “Read it yourself.”

Cassius unfolded the parchment and began to read. At his sharp gasp, Brutus closed his eyes. A moment later, wine and bile rising in his throat, he stumbled from the tent and clutched at the standard beside it, vomiting onto the hard-baked earth.

*

Later that evening, Cassius had the slaves build up a fire in the flat clearing beside the tents. It seemed that Brutus was most at ease in the open air – at least, he would not move to come inside, so Cassius sat with him, under the stars. They drank in silence, until Brutus began to speak, quietly, of Italy, and of his desire to go home. Eventually, he drifted into speaking about Cicero, abandoning his usual reticence and allowing Cassius an unaccustomed glimpse into the depth of his turmoil. Cassius perceived an unexplored well of remorse in Brutus stemming from his abandonment of his friend; guilt that he had not been there to save him, perhaps.

The anecdotes and fond memories of Cicero rang with a heavy depth of longing, every word speaking profoundly of Brutus' loneliness and regret. As he listened, Cassius was felled by the sudden realisation that Brutus had loved Cicero, loved him still, and was aching with the pain of it. He was horrified not to have recognised it sooner. 

“You never once mentioned your fondness for him,” he said, not wishing to sound accusatory, but knowing that surprise and jealousy would make each word bitter on his tongue.

Brutus barely seemed to notice. Cassius saw that his eyes were shining wetly in the firelight and reached to touch him gently on the arm. “You might have mentioned the depth of your affection. Did you think I wouldn’t understand?”

Brutus turned his face towards the fire. “Please, Cassius. Is it not enough for you that you've won?”

“This is not winning,” Cassius murmured, taking Brutus’ hands between his own and sliding to his knees before him. He looked up into Brutus’ desolate eyes, “How can this be any sort of victory?” 

Brutus was trembling, shaking the way he had on the morning of the Ides of March. He clutched at Cassius’ hands as though they might anchor him more steadily to the ground; Cassius clasped him tightly and thought how much he hated Antony.

“Cicero was a good man,” Brutus whispered, as though he could barely make sense of the words, “a _good_ man.”

Privately, Cassius disagreed; Brutus had been right when he had accused him of hating Cicero. He had detested seeing himself mirrored so closely in a man whose career had been a greater success. As far as he could discern there was only one good man left in the world, and that man sat before him, wiping at his wet cheeks with the edge of his tunic. 

“We must do as Atticus asks, and return to Rome immediately,” Cassius said, clasping Brutus’ hands. “We cannot wait any longer for an invitation.”

Brutus nodded, “Yes."

Later, when they were alone in the darkness of his tent, more softly, “yes.”

*

_Brutus Attico S.D._

_Words are inadequate to express my grief on hearing from you of the loss of Cicero. ~~He has been more to me~~ He was the last of our final great generation of Romans; from now on, without him, it is difficult to predict what shape the future may take. I believe Cicero to be the greatest man Rome has ever lost. With his death comes a new era for Rome; a poorer and an unhappier one._

_You knew his shortcomings better than anyone; he himself would readily admit to charges of ambition, cowardice, disloyalty, and yet I have known him to be the most humble, courageous and faithful of friends. In remembrance of that, I must return to Rome to attempt to carry out his wishes in the best way I am able. You may expect us at the gates of the city within six months.  
_

_Kypsela, Id. Oct. ___

____

*

Cassius was cheered by the way Brutus seemed to have regained something of his old, familiar self during the latter part of the march through northern Greece. He rode up and down the lines, conversing with the men and making a joke of Cassius’ consuming interest in the organisation of the army’s supplies.

Beneath his good humour lay something Cassius thought only he ever glimpsed: the anger that had first driven Brutus’ determination to return to Rome had cooled, his desire to rid the city of Antony now hardened to a bitter will of iron. His lack of concern for the possibility of defeat alarmed and impressed Cassius by turns.

He allowed Cassius, every night, to remove each separate piece of armour and lift the tunic from his back, coaxing him into bed where the two of them would lie in silence, each contemplating the sound of the other’s breathing, or where Cassius would kiss him and make love to him with quiet devotion. Now that they were united in purpose, there seemed very little need to delineate where one body ended and the other began. Occasionally Brutus would mumble and shake in his sleep, and Cassius would try to make sense of the jumble of promises and recriminations which fell from his lips, holding him still until the tremors had passed.

*

By the beginning of winter they had reached Philippi, a bald, rocky plain in the east of Macedonia, over which vultures circled and the cold sun did little to disperse the frost that gathered overnight on tents and armour and the horses’ bridles. Camp was struck at the foot of the mountains, a short distance from the Via Egnatia, and a messenger dispatched to the city of Philippi, seeking confirmation of their allegiance.

By the time evening had fallen on the first day upon the plain, fourteen legions occupied the raised ridge overlooking the valley. In their commanders’ tent, Cassius sat at his desk composing a letter to Proitos of Xanthos negotiating another shipment of grain, while Brutus lay on the couch toying with the ring his mother had sent him with the last raft of letters to arrive from Rome. 

“It’s a good fit,” Cassius commented, distracted by the glinting of the ring in the lamplight. 

Brutus smiled at him, easily and haplessly seductive, sprawled among the furs. 

Cassius’ intention to go to him and kiss him was diverted by the arrival of Centurion Vennius, whom Cassius had asked to bring a report once the camp was settled, informing him of the state of the roads and a detailed account of the lay of the land. 

“Sir,” Vennius said, ducking inside the tent with barely a pause to salute, “word from the scouts: the enemy is sighted.”

Brutus shifted from his position on the couch. “At last!”

“It’s not just Octavian, sir. Marc Antony is with him.”

Brutus stared at him, astounded. “It’s impossible.”

“The heron standard was seen.”

“How many legions?” Cassius demanded. 

“Nineteen, it seems.”

“To our fourteen,” Brutus muttered, bowing his head. “The worm turns.”

Cassius estimated furiously how long it would take to break camp and have the men on the march. “How far away are they?”

“A day’s march.”

The men knew the lie of the land between Macedonia and the Bosphorus, and could make double-quick time through the mountain passes back to Kypsela. It was feasible, he thought, to have the men away again into Asia before Antony could have sight of them. “Muster the men. We must break camp and begin the retreat immediately.”

Vennius saluted and turned to leave.

“Wait, stop,” Brutus said, getting to his feet. Cassius glanced at him and saw that his face was set. “No, do nothing. We will not retreat.”

“Old friend, this is – ”

“No. No more running. We will meet them here tomorrow. If we win, all the more glory for us; and if we are to die, this is as good a place as any. It is in the hands of the gods, now. We have the upper ground.”

This Brutus was the man borne of these hard months of marching; the strange, brittle creature hatched in the wake of the news of Cicero’s death. His eyes brimmed with desperate hope for the resolution of their campaign, for success or for disaster. Cassius saw that he was right, that there would be no point in running if it was to be the beginning of many months of retreat and finally ignominious slaughter, cornered like pigs in the hunt.

He considered Brutus’ face carefully, and the pleading, desperate look in his eyes. “As he says.” 

Vennius nodded in receipt of his orders and departed, and Brutus smiled at Cassius as though greatly relieved. 

“Thank you, brother.”

Cassius shook his head and lifted a hand to Brutus’ shoulder, his fingers curling around the warm skin at the back of his neck. Brutus’ pulse beat strongly beneath his hand, at a counterpoint to his own. “No, don’t thank me. You’re completely correct; this is the only thing to be done.

"You, go." He gestured for the notary slave to leave. “We are not to be disturbed.”

Brutus met his eyes - the slave slipped from the tent and repeated Cassius' instructions to the guards - and he smiled again, a crooked, gentle smile of tenderness and familiarity. 

“We’ve been at this too long,” he said, as Cassius’ fingers dipped into the hollow above his collarbone. “I’ve no desire to hide away in the east, fooling ourselves that we can return to Rome as heroes. Antony will not stop until one of us, he or I, is dead.”

“I know. Let us hope it will be him.”

Cassius took each of Brutus’ hands in his own and raised them to his lips, first the left and then the right with the heavy gold ring upon its middle finger. He kissed the fingers of each hand reverently, before turning them over to kiss the palms. 

Brutus sighed and let his eyes fall closed. They stood in portentous silence for a long moment, until Cassius turned half-away from him and began unceremoniously to undress. 

“Do you remember when we were boys?” he asked quietly as he unclasped his vambraces and tugged them free. “I adored you almost as soon as I saw you.”

Brutus laughed softly, watching him. “That’s an audacious lie to tell me.”

Cassius laughed too and reached to remove Brutus’ tunic, unwrapping him from it, pushing it from his shoulders. He revelled in each hand’s span of skin as it was revealed, piece by wondrous piece. 

“I did love you,” he argued softly, “I’ve always loved you.”

Brutus smiled sadly and stood before him like a feast for his eyes and a banquet for his hungry mouth. Cassius drew in a breath. The force of his desire was such that he was almost sure it could rouse him to defeat Antony single-handedly; he understood the logic of the Thebans in manning their army with pairs of lovers, if this was the ferocity of purpose which love could incite in a soldier’s breast. 

He closed his eyes and drew Brutus nearer. He bent his head to kiss the sensitive junction between neck and shoulder and breathed deeply to inhale Brutus’ warm, familiar scent. How was it that Brutus was able to make him understand so much about himself, and about the nature of love, to such an extent that he felt he could write a work of philosophy on the subject? To him, Brutus stood as a solitary exception to all imaginable rules, spurning objections on the grounds of propriety and morality until all that was left was the acreage of his body and Cassius’ hands upon it. 

“I regret ever trying to flatter you,” he murmured, lips skimming flesh. “You are a work of singular perfection – I was committing a crime against beauty by ever attempting to define the scope of it with words.”

Brutus chuckled, a low vibration against Cassius’ chest. “I always thought it was a pity you didn’t go in more for poetry, you’ve far more of a skill for it than me.”

“Don’t accuse me of sophistry – poetry, I can bear, but you mustn’t think my adoration of you anything but the sincerest truth.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Brutus kissed his mouth, drinking deeply, and allowed himself to be propelled towards the couch.

“If only men were able to marry men,” Cassius said with a wry smile, “then all marriages might be so harmonious as ours.”

Brutus did not say, out of sensitivity, that he considered it unfortunate that Cassius should talk of marriage and raise the spectre of their unfortunate, abandoned wives; nor, out of kindness, that Cassius would not have been his first choice had such a thing been permissible. It was better to allow Cassius to believe his own suppositions: that all they had done had been done in Brutus’ own best interests; and that the very force of Cassius’ devotion could persuade him to profess an attachment greater than the sum of its parts. 

“Our days in Greece as boys were some of my happiest,” he nevertheless confessed when Cassius pressed him to name his best memories of their association with one another. 

Cassius nodded, stilling his movements to gaze down at him in tenderness. “I imagine Elysium to be something akin to that stretch of golden beach at Pythagorios.”

“I don't think it likely you'll be able to choose,” Brutus teased, smiling despite himself.

Cassius shrugged gracefully, returning to his purpose with a tighter grip on Brutus’ hips, murmuring: “It would surely make the recognition of our own mortality considerably less daunting.” 

Brutus sighed, not unkindly, and pulled Cassius into his arms. He could love him, for the valued liberation these moments of abandon provided. If the intervening years hadn’t made such things impossible, it might have been easy to love him for much more besides.

*

The next morning, the sun rose weakly over the battlefield as the centurions assembled the quincunx; formed of the infantry divisions flanked on either side by cavalry, it occupied the higher ground of the plain. Brutus and Cassius, horsed, gazed out from their position at the rear of the infantry, on the highest ground that commanded the best view. Antony's force assembled on the lower ground, bearing their golden herons before them; legions stretched nearly the length of the valley, straddling the Via Egnatia like a sprawling ink-stain on a map. 

Cassius found the calm before the onset of battle always to be the most unnerving time of the day – he would sooner it were over and the command to advance sounded. Brutus, beside him, with his black-plumed helmet, seemed more at ease, with that peculiar good-humoured calmness that Cassius found mercifully reassuring. 

“Heavens, I entirely forgot. Today is your birthday, isn’t it?”

Cassius glanced at him. “Is it? I believe you’re right.”

Brutus offered his hand, and Cassius grasped it.

“Happy birthday,” Brutus said, with a maddening, amused curl to his lips, his drawling voice so familiar from the beach at Pythagorios, on the day Cassius had turned eighteen. He wondered if Brutus remembered it, so very long ago. “Sorry there’s no cake.”

“Next year, eh? You can bake me an extra big one.”

Brutus smiled and turned his face towards the sun. “I shan’t forget.”

*

The setting sun was tumbling down the western half of the sky, casting the long shadows of mountains over the full length of the valley. If one were to glance at the battlefield from the top of the tallest peak, it might have seemed that the ground had been strewn with the contents a child’s toybox, miniature wooden horses and broken soldiers scattered about the field where they had fallen. It was clear that the fighting day was done.

With defeat swiftly becoming a rout, the remains of the eastern legions were scattering before Antony’s vanguard, breaking the last line of the infantry and leaving the field open for the victors to sweep towards the Liberators’ camp. Cassius’ eyes gazed unseeing from a face still dirtied and bloodied, his mouth slack and his lips growing cold to the touch. 

Brutus traced the line of Cassius’ neck with his eyes, the curve of the bronze shoulder-guards, the smooth swell of the moulded breastplate; he gazed down at the hand curled emptily at Cassius’ side, where he had been reaching in vain for the hem of Brutus’ tunic. He wanted to rage against this injustice, to rip the armour from Cassius’ body, because this was not how Brutus wished to remember him, so broken and unfamiliar. He looked up, into the melee of the battle in the distance, at the advancing lines of Antony’s men, and realised there would not even be time enough to wipe the dirt from Cassius’ face before they were overrun. 

It was while he looked on all this that his resolve began to harden. He took Cassius’ body in his arms and cradled that empty, lifeless breast to his own, gazing out over the sorrowless plain. Everything there was to love about Rome had already vanished, trampled under Antony’s boot and stifled by Octavian’s machinations. Cicero was dead, and with him Brutus’ hope that the Republic might return to what it once had been; what was there to return to, if not to that? And now, to run and remain in Macedonia, without any hope of living the life he had once dared to begin to imagine, seemed outrageous in its wretchedness.

He laid Cassius down gently and exchanged words with Vennius, making clear his intention not to flee. He hoped the centurion would survive, to live peacefully and well. It took only a moment to steel himself and to regret there not being a private moment in which he might take Cassius’ face in his hands and kiss it. Cassius gazed on with his sightless eyes. 

He stood, taking in his last view of the battlefield, and then began to walk, cutting away his armour as he did so. Cicero had hated the accoutrements of war as much as Cassius had admired them. It seemed only fitting that Brutus should march down to Hades to meet him without being clad in the very uniform of their failure. 

He walked towards the enemy with every expectation of meeting his death. He remembered his and Cicero’s final conversation, that summer afternoon in Velia. He smiled; this was the death dictated to him by posterity. He was Marcus Junius Brutus, descendant of the assassin of the last king of Rome, and to these legionaries at least, he would be remembered for the honourable manner in which he had met his end, and not for crimes committed in the name of amorphous and insupportable ideals. 

His suicide would be an act committed in absolute honesty, not desperation, and it was his last fervent hope that the gods, such as they were to him these days, should find it fitting.

***


End file.
